There’s a reason there are rules about which pets you can and can’t have. A cat? Sure, have one of those! But you couldn’t bring a tiger home and toss it a yarn ball. So if you want a snake — great! Mr. Slithers is a nice name. Bringing home a deadly albino cobra though, well that’s what’s got officials in Los Angeles worked up, after it escaped from whoever was keeping it.

The Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control is searching high and low in the Thousand Oaks neighborhood to find the hooded viper, which may have been a pet, reports FoxNews.com.

Officials are warning people to take care and keep their eyes peeled for the snake, which is “very dangerous and venomous.”

“Do not approach it, do not try to capture it, do not try to kill it,” said a Los Angeles County spokesman, adding that if the cobra does strike someone, anti-venom is at the ready to be flown in from the San Diego Zoo.

Keeping a cobra is against the law in California outside of educational and scientific purposes, and even then you need a permit. This particular snake, the monocled cobra, can grow more than four feet long.

And there’s really no reason to keep a cobra in your house, says the owner of one pet store, which is why it’s odd that someone might’ve been keeping one without the proper safety measures like a double-locked cage.

“I am very disturbed,” he said. “I don’t think there is anything positive about finding a monocled cobra.”

California authorities hunt albino cobra in upscale neighborhood [FoxNews.com]

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