Snake taunts homeowner by hiding in toilet for days. It was ‘a toilet diva,’ she says
An Arizona woman was forced to play a bizarre game of cat and mouse with a large snake when the reptile took up residence in her toilet and stayed for days.
Michelle Lespron says she found the 3-to-4 foot coachwhip in the worst of ways, when she returned from vacation and tried using her bathroom.
“I lifted up the toilet seat and he or she was there, kind of curled up, and it filled up almost the whole bowl. It was a very large snake,” Lespron told McClatchy News.
That snake was like a toilet diva.
“I don’t think I have ever screamed louder in my life. Then I slammed the toilet lid back down and ran.”
It happened in mid-July at her home in Tuscon, and Lespron resorted to using her guest bathroom while a series of attempts were made to catch the snake over a three-day period.
Her father was the first to try, and he watched it quickly disappear back down the pipe and vanish. Lespron then called Rattlesnake Solutions, a snake catching service, which sent a professional on three occasions.
The snake escaped back into the pipes the first two times but was eventually taken off guard.
Video shows the snake catcher, identified as Nikolaus Kemme, barged through the bathroom door and snatched the snake from the bowl in less than 2 seconds.
It responded by biting him on the arm, then hissing at him. Another bite was landed when the snake catcher tried rinsing the toilet water off the snake in her shower — an act of kindness that was not appreciated, she says.
“Nik is a hero,” Lespron said. “That snake was like a toilet diva. It felt like it had ownership of that toilet and wasn’t letting anyone get it out of there.”
Rattlesnake Solutions reports it handles only one or two calls a year involving snakes in toilets in the state.
“These snakes may get into the plumbing through vaults in septic systems, flushed in from other homes, and a variety of other situations,” the company says. “This is among the rarest of situations we are called to handle.”
Snakes captured by the company are released back into the wild, and Lespron said her only request was that the coachwhip be released somewhere other than on her property.
In the aftermath of the home invasion, Lespron says she adopted a new protocol that includes: using the “brightest possible light” in her bathroom, lifting the lid before sitting and flushing “once or twice.”
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