Louisiana Woman Surprised by Snake in Toilet – How’d it Get There?

Louisiana is a state full of surprises. Heck, our daily weather is often a surprise. There could be beautiful sunshine one minute and the next minute you're running for cover from a sudden cloudburst in a thunderstorm. While technically surprising we wouldn't classify getting caught in a rainstorm as an unexpected surprise.

Now, what happened to a Shreveport, Louisiana woman in the early morning hours of Wednesday, that's an unexpected surprise. According to Steve Kennedy the proprietor of Steve's Snaketuary, the woman had walked into her bathroom at about 1:30 in the morning. As she was preparing to use the toilet, she noticed the surprise.

As you can see from the video that surprise is the kind of surprise that would make a large number of us suddenly need the restroom, both number one and number two. Yeah, that's a ball python in the bottom of that toilet bowl. The good news is the snake is not venomous. The bad news is the snake is still a snake.

Fortunately, Steve of the Snaketuary was able to remove the reptile unharmed. Ball Pythons though not common to the area are very common to pet owners who have snakes. According to Steve, he told KSLA TV in Shreveport that the Ball Python is one of the more popular snakes that is sold in pet stores.

Now that we've recovered from the shock of seeing a snake in a woman's toilet the next question you have to be asking is this, could that happen to me? We do have snakes around here. I do have a toilet too. How do I keep those snakes out of my bathroom?

Most experts would say in order to do that, you need to look up. As in up on your roof. Your bathroom and sewer system have vent pipes that run through your roof. Without those vent pipes the toilets wouldn't flush and it just is a huge mess. Snakes have been known to climb down those vent pipes and into toilets. Yeah, that's how they do it in a lot of places around here.

And yes, snakes can climb on top of a roof without any issue. They might climb up an adjacent tree or shrub. They can even climb walls if they have to. The best way to prevent a snake in the vent pipe and eventually the toilet is to put a screen or wire mesh covering over the pipe. That way it can still vent the air but it will keep out snakes and rats too.

In this case, it was all's well that ends well. The snake was rescued. I call being removed from the bottom of a toilet rescued, so yes, the snake was rescued. The homeowner got her toilet back without a snake. Steve at the Snaketuary got to save a snake. And we all got to imagine for one brief terror-filled moment what it must have been like to drop our pants around our ankles and prepare to sit down only to see a snake look up from between our legs.

Dang nature, you scary.