A pensioner got the shock of her life after she went to the toilet – and found an exotic SNAKE in the bowl.
Stunned Mary Curtis was ”absolutely terrified” when she lifted the loo lid and a spotted the black and white serpent.
Mary, 70, looked in horror as the black and white striped Californian Kingsnake popped its head out of the water-filled bowl.
Retired PA Mary, 70, ran from her flat and knocked on younger neighbour Michael Eva’s door.
Michael and Mary went back into the bathroom, where they found the snake sitting on the BATH, so the terrified pair ran from the room and sellotaped the door shut.
It later emerged the reptile had escaped from a neighbouring flat – four MONTHS ago.
Mary, of Croydon, south London, said: “I’ve never seen anything like it before. I was so shocked.
“I’ve seen snakes before, but never one poking its head out of my toilet. It was terrifying.
When I went to tell Michael about the snake, he asked me how many gins I’d had.”
Michael, 34, added: “She looked like she’d seen a ghost. This head, with the forked tongue, just poked out the toilet bowl, it freaked us all out.”
An RSPCA inspector found the snake hiding under the bath, and quickly identified it as a Californian Kingsnake.
Mary said: “Apparently it’s non-venomous, but you don’t know that at the time.
“It wasn’t a snake I recognised, and any snake I don’t recognise, especially if it’s coming out of your toilet, is deadly until proven otherwise.
“I did not know that snakes swam through pipes and toilets.”
An upstairs neighbour later claimed the snake as his own, saying it had gone missing four months ago.
Michael added: “I never knew he kept snakes. I can sort of see the humour in it now, but at the time it was like ‘there’s a snake in the toilet!’ It was frightening.”
The California kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula californiae) is a nonvenomous snake endemic to the western United States and northern Mexico.
It is a relatively small subspecies of the common kingsnake[1] and is naturally found in a wide variety of habitats.
