A python that came up in a fisherman's net in northern Kurigram spent a night on display in a village yard before a wildlife rescuer collected it and handed it to the forest department.

Abdus Sobhan, son of Kuddus Mia, sets china duari ring nets in a bil between the Dharla and Baromasia rivers near Hak Bazar in Shimbulbari union of Phulbari upazila. He lifted the net on Sunday afternoon and found the snake inside. With help from other fishermen he carried it home, net and all, and word spread fast: by evening hundreds of people from nearby villages were at his house, and many of them filmed the animal and posted the clips online.

The rescue came the next morning. Nur Hasan Nahid, a volunteer with the snake and wildlife rescue group WSRTBD, travelled from Rangpur and reached the spot at about 9:30am on Monday. He removed the python from the net and handed it to the Rangpur forest division, according to Shimbulbari union parishad chairman Shariful Alam Mia Sohail and the rescuer's own account. The chairman said the administration had been told so that the snake could either be released in a safe place or kept under protection.

How big the python was is disputed. Nahid described it as a Burmese python about five and a half feet long. Villagers who saw it gave much larger figures, and bdnews24 reported residents' estimate of 13 to 14 feet. Other reports quoted people at the house putting it at six to seven feet. No independent measurement has been published, and photographs taken at the scene do not settle the question.

The forest department's plan, as Nahid relayed it to The Daily Star, is to send the python to Rangpur Zoo because there is no large forest close to Phulbari where it could be released. That would make the zoo the animal's long-term home rather than the wooded tract the phrase 'handed to the forest department' might suggest. The department has not said publicly when the transfer will happen or how the snake is being kept in the meantime.

Locals believe the python came down the river from India. The spot where the net was set is three to four kilometres from the Indian border at Gidaldah, and the Dharla and Baromasia both carry water across it. That explanation is a guess: nobody has traced the animal's route, and the reports do not record any examination that would establish where it came from.

The case is a small illustration of how wildlife turns up in Bangladeshi villages. Ring nets set across a bil to catch fish do not discriminate, and a snake that swims into one is stuck until someone lifts the net. Pythons are a protected species in Bangladesh, so the animal could not simply be killed or sold; the calls to the union parishad and the forest department are the route the law expects people to take.

What remains open is the ordinary, unglamorous part. The forest department has not confirmed the snake's length, sex or health, or said whether a zoo enclosure is a suitable end point for a wild python. Nor is it clear what happened to the net, or whether anyone checked the bil for other animals caught in it. For now the crowd has gone home and the snake is in official hands, with the animal's size still depending on who is asked.