Arizona woman returns home to find hissing snake in her toilet

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 told The Associated Press. "Thank God the lid was closed."

The encounter happened July 15. But Lespron has been getting messages from family, friends and even people she went to high school with since Rattlesnake Solutions, the Phoenix-based company that removed the snake, recently posted an employee's video.

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 says 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 calls "my hero" - three tries to get the black and pink coachwhip snake 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 measured between 3 feet and 4 feet long, in a natural habitat elsewhere.

Bryan Hughes, the owner of Rattlesnake Solutions, said it wasn't the first time his staff have seen a coachwhip snake in a home though it's rare to find reptiles in residences.

"We are called to catch one or two snakes in toilets each year, and it is very uncommon,"  Rattlesnake Solutions wrote on its Facebook page. "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."

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Fortunately for Lespron, the species is non-venomous. 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. And she no longer enters the bathroom in the dark, and always lifts the lid ever so slowly.

Snakes have been found in toilets around the world in recent years.

In 2021, a 5-foot python slithered through an Austrian man's drain and bit him while he was sitting on the toilet. Emergency services removed the snake, and the man was treated for minor injuries.

In 2020, a man in California was about to use the toilet when a boa constrictor popped out. The snake was handed over to animal control. 

In 2017, a Texas family was horrified to find a rattlesnake in their toilet, and then dozens more underneath their house.   

In 2018, a snake was found slithering in a Virginia Beach toilet. Said the homeowner who made the shocking discovery: "Look down before you sit down."

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• Arizona
• snake
• Tucson