Why do integers in database row tuple have an 'L' suffix?

My question is why do a MySQL row's integer values have an 'L' suffix? Here are the details:

The following dictionary -- artificially formatted here for ease of display --

{'estimated': '', 
 'suffix': '', 
 'typeofread': 'g', 
  'acct_no': 901001000L, 
  'counter': 0, 
  'time_billed': datetime.datetime(2012, 5, 1, 9, 5, 33), 
  'date_read': datetime.datetime(2012, 3, 13, 23, 19, 45), 
  'reading': 3018L, 
  'meter_num': '26174200'}

is comprised of a MySQL database table's columns zipped with the result of reading once from the table.

I can remove the 'L' by passing these values into int(), so if that dictionary were in a variable named snapped_read, I could do this:

int(snapped_read['reading']) and 3018L would change to 3018.

I'm just curious as to why integers show up this way.