Suprise Snake Bathroom Visitor

A snake in my bathroom?

Last night just as I finished brushing my teeth I was met with a surprise. A cute little garter snake. It was quietly (as if snakes are anything else) peering up at me from the bath rug. I'm not afraid of snakes, but I have to say it quite startled me. "There's a snake in the bathroom!", I announced loudly for all of the house to hear.

It was a bit on bigger side for the garter snakes I've seen around here, especially the poor injured one I found in the kitchen this winter thanks to the cat. Could this be one of his relatives? Probably. As we seem to have a nice healthy population of garter snakes around here, I wouldn't be surprised if they were all semi related to all the ones we believe live in the crawl space under the house. Which may just be where he came from.

Since we are going through a bit of an 'unseasonably warm' heat wave, all the doors and windows were open to air out the house. The hypothesis stands that the snake just came in through one of the open doors from their home under our home. Which was exactly right where I returned this guy.

However easier said than done. These little guys are really tough! Unbelievably strong is more like it. He slithered away into a crevice in a corner and then turned himself into a pretzel of snake. Not even a coil as one would expect of a snake. A total pretzel ball of muscle. Every attempt to gingerly pull him out of this position seemed fruitless as it only re-shifted its position and re-wedged himself in this space. This reminded me of the time I found a snake under one of burners of the range top... it tried to escape into the oven and when I tried to pull on it, it was impossible because the snake had wound itself around elements inside the stove. Anyway eventually all of my taunting must have made my bathroom visitor uncomfortable and it somehow found an escape gape in the trim and ventured out onto the open floor where he was easier to grab hold of. "You should put gloves," my boyfriend observed, "what if it bites?". I've handled many garter snakes and have never faced any aggression, they are as harmless as toads.


And no, this isn't some April fools joke, even though the timing was appropriate.