Error loading SQL_VARIANT data type using Python

Question

I use Python and SQLAlchemy to query a database that I did not create.

I am having trouble querying a table containing the SQL_VARIANT data type. I get an error message:

sqlalchemy.exc.DBAPIError: (Error) ("ODBC -150 data type is not supported. Unable to read column value. ',' HY000 ')

I confirmed to the database creator that the Value column is of type SQL_VARIANT . Does anyone know a way to load this data type using Python? I am currently using mssql with pyodbc.

Thanks for any help you can offer!

Versions:

 Python 2.7, SQLAlchemy 0.7.8