Like a scene out of a horror movie, Michelle Lespron returned to her Tucson, Arizona, home to find a snake had set up camp in her toilet.
“I’d been gone for four days and was looking forward to using my own restroom in peace. I lifted up the lid and he or she was curled up,” Lespron said. “Thank God the lid was closed.”
The encounter happened on July 15, but Lespron has been getting messages from family, friends and even people she went to high school with since Rattlesnake Solutions, a Phoenix-based company that removed the snake, recently posted an employee’s video.
Photo: Nikolaus Kemme / Rattlesnake Solutions via AP
The 20-second video shows the snake being pulled out of the toilet bowl and then hissing straight at the camera.
“Everybody has the same reaction: Oh my God, that’s my worst nightmare,” she said.
Other people thought it was a prank video and the snake was a prop.
“Even my law partner was like: ‘Ha ha. Nice gag,’” Lespron, a personal injury attorney, said.
Lespron said that her father tried to wrangle the snake that same night, but it slithered away. So, she called Rattlesnake Solutions the next morning.
It took the handler — who Lespron called “my hero” — three tries to get the black and pink coachwhip firmly in his grasp. He was able to wrestle the snake with one hand while capturing it all on his cellphone with the other.
The handler later released the snake, which was about 1m to 1.2m long, in a natural habitat elsewhere.
Bryan Hughes, the owner of Rattlesnake Solutions, said it was not the first time his staff have seen a coachwhip in a home, although it is rare to find reptiles in residences.
Fortunately for Lespron, the species is nonvenomous. Still, she was taking no chances.
After her reptile run-in, Lespron used her guest bathroom for three weeks before feeling comfortable enough to go back to her own. She also no longer enters the bathroom in the dark, and always lifts the lid ever so slowly.
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