In something straight out of a horror movie, a Texas woman had a very unexpected fright when she went to the toilet in the middle of the night.
The woman, named Maria Jaimes from Cedar Creek, Texas, sat down on the toilet in the pitch black, only to find a snake lurking in her toilet.
The snake, which was coiled beneath the seat of the toilet, bit Jaimes on the leg as she sat down.
“The rat snake bit me in my leg when I sat on it,” Jaimes told local news KXAN. “Very scary situation on a Sunday morning at 4:30 a.m. with lights off.”
Jaimes snapped from pictures immediately to prove her unbelievable tale.
“As scared as I was when this happened, I am the one who took these pictures because no one would believe it!” she said.
“I just want people to be aware this happens in real life and to be aware.”
Jaimes suspects that the snake got into her toilet via a vent in her roof. Her husband has now put chicken wire across the vent to prevent any more slithery visitors from entering their home.
While very uncommon, there have been several other instances of snakes being found in toilets. Only last year, one Texas woman found a rattlesnake lurking in her toilet, and another also found a rat snake poking out from the U-bend.
“Snakes coming up in the toilet is an infrequent occurrence,” pest control expert Alan Brown, technical director at ABC Home and Commercial Services, told KXAN.
“In 25 years of pest control, I have never dealt directly with it or have anybody that I know of deal with it.”
Snakes can find their way into your toilet via the plumbing, or may enter the home by other means and climb into the water in search of a drink.
“One is through the vent stack up on the roof… They can hold their breath and come through the toilet. They can also come kind of through the sewage system—especially if there may be a break in the lines or rats in the sewer,” Brown said.
“And then in some cases, they just make their way into a house traditionally, through a crack or a crevice. Or [they] make their way in and are looking for water and curl up in a toilet, as well.”
Texas rat snakes—also known as the western rat snake, black rat snake, or pilot black snake—are found primarily in the southern U.S., particularly in Texas and neighboring states. They typically range from 4 to 5 feet in length, although some can grow longer.
These snakes are non-venomous and generally nonaggressive toward humans, but they can be defensive and may strike if they feel threatened.
Roughly 8,000 people are bitten by venomous snakes across the U.S. every year—with 8–15 deaths as a result—according to the Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center.
Some other countries have a lot more venomous snake encounters, leading to many more deaths.
“[In India], 2.8 million bites are reported and 50,000 people die from snake bites each year due to poor access to medical treatment,” Damian Michael, a landscape ecologist and herpetologist at Charles Sturt University, told Newsweek.
This article by Jess Thomson was first published by Newsweek on 20 December 2024. Lead Image: Stock image of a toilet (main) and a Texas rat snake (inset). A Texas woman had a fright when she sat on the toilet at night only to be bitten by a snake. ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS.
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