There's nothing quite like coming home after you've been away on vacation. But for one Arizona woman, coming home was far from relaxing. Tucson resident Michelle Lespron returned home from a Nashville vacation to find there was a new resident in her toilet: a coachwhip snake.
Dealing with this snake on her own (like this Maine resident who recently discovered snakes in his car did) was not an option. "I slammed the lid back down right away when I saw it," Lespron told WCVB.
She immediately called Rattlesnake Solutions, a local snake removal service. After three attempts, over two days, the service was able to pull the snake out of her toilet. "He's my hero, Nick at Rattlesnake Solutions is my absolute hero," Lespron said.
Thankfully, it wasn't a poisonous snake and the professionals were able to relocate it.
"A coachwhip—some people call it a red racer but this one isn't red—it is a fast, intelligent snake, that does a lot of things. It eats rattlesnakes, it climbs trees, it climbs houses, it gets everywhere and does what it wants," Bryan Hughes, the owner of Rattlesnake Solutions, told WCVB.
Hughes also said that toilet snakes aren't a normal call for them, but snakes are more active during the warmer, summer months.
"I know that I'm seeing a ton of comments on our social media about people ready to call their realtor and move to Alaska," Hughes said. However, there isn't much homeowners can do to prevent an occurrence like this.
"These snakes may get into the plumbing through vaults in septic systems, flushed in from other homes, and a variety of other situations. If you're seeing this and thinking you need to put your home on the market, you should know this is among the rarest of situations we are called to handle,"the company wrote in a Facebook post .
Lespron was a little traumatized after the event, opting to use her other bathroom even after the snake was gone.
"I couldn't use that bathroom for three weeks even after he got it out; I actually had all my toiletries already packed from the trip I was on, I didn't even unpack my toiletries. I just moved everything to the other bathroom," Lespron said.
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