Snake in the Bathroom: Terrified Resident Finds 22lb Python While Sitting on the Toilet
The man was sitting on a toilet when he noticed the serpent in his shower.
Over fifty percent of people are afraid of snakes, according to research, and for good reason. "Each year, an estimated 7,000–8,000 people are bitten by venomous snakes in the United States, and about 5 of those people die in the United States alone," says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While you are most likely to encounter snakes in the wild, humans have encountered them in less common situations, like in airplanes, cars, and most recently, the bathroom.
An Australian man was sitting on the toilet when he encountered a rather large and venomous snake, which was lounging in his shower. He called Hudson Snake Catching, and Anthony Jackson got the call.
It wasn't any old snake but a 22-pound python that measured five to six feet. "Old mate on the toilet when he first saw me told me, 'Mate, it scared me,'" he told news.com.au. The snake was lounging on the shower frame near a heat lamp. Ironically, Jackson reveals that the man on the toilet actually had a pet python.
"After I stopped having a laugh for a few minutes, I got the hook and took it down and then it was cranky …(because) I removed it from the heat lamp which is where it was finding comfort," he said.
Jackson captured the snake within 30 seconds, but the "curious" python tried to fight him off. "It tried to bite me … I'm thinking it was kind of a predator thing because it looked down and saw me as a food item," he said. "But once I took it down with a hook and put it into a pillow case, I rescued it and put it in the wild with all the other ones."
Jackson believes the snake was in a tree cut down in the neighborhood. "Behind the house, they've been cutting out a lot of trees, and whether or not it'd be living at that property, it had been disturbed," he said. "It got into the roof, and because there's always rodents, it had a feed, and then because of the cold, it found the heat lamp in the bathroom."
RELATED: A Silent Invasion: 11 Invasive Species That Threaten Native American Wildlife
Jackson also maintains that pythons aren't as violent as some other snakes. "A year ago, I was petrified of them, and now I think they're beautiful. It just goes to show that education is the key with anything," he said. "They can punch a hell of a bite though, so you've got to treat them with respect, and that's why when we handle them, I like to use my body as a tree, and … they will kind of forget about me."
