(Forget Planes…) Snake in a Bathroom!

As noted wordsmith Samuel L. Jackson once said, "I'm tired of these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday to Friday plane!" I'm told the un-edited, not-for-TV version had a slightly different line being uttered, but I just can't imagine what it might have been.

Anyway, we've been treated to a lot of "snake pays a surprise visit" stories lately. The Portland Trailblazers had an unexpected guest in their locker room, and a woman in Singapore got a real jolt out of serpent intent on playing the bathroom version of "Whack-a-Mole."

As with celebrity deaths, unwanted snake encounters apparently happen in threes.

From the College Station, Texas local, The Eagle:

For most people, walking into a room in your home and encountering a 10- to 15-foot snake sounds like a nightmare.

But what was once a horrible fear recently became a reality for College Station resident Veronica Rodriguez when she went to flip the light on in her bathroom and discovered an African python crawling into her bathtub.

"It was a huge scare," said Rodriguez, who was still visibly shaken from the incident on Monday, eight days after the snake sighting.

I would probably be shaken, too. Not to mention deaf in both ears from emptying a 9mm magazine in a heavily-tiled environment.

Veronica's night began on what she would consider to be a normal event...guinea pig bathing:

About 6 p.m. and while her daughter was at work, she decided to give the three household guinea pigs a bath.

After bathing each one, she would take it outside to let it run in a penned area while she cleaned its cage and would leave her back door open each time.

Before it was dark out, she and her daughter's pets were back inside the home, and at about 9 p.m. she got a call from her mother.

"I was on the phone with my mom and I kept hearing noises in the back," she said. Thinking initially it was the guinea pigs, she said she went to check her daughter's room but found nothing.

Just like in the horror movies! And, like the movies, after the third time of hearing noises, Veronica decided to check the one room she hadn't before. The bathroom.

"As soon as I turned on the light, that's when I saw it," she said. "It was crawling into my tub."

Veronica then proceeded to do what most of us would do in a similar scenario. She ran like hell outside and called the cops. Soon, College Station police officer Tony Gonzalez showed up. With a paper bag.

"When the officer showed up, he came with a brown paper sack," she recalled. "I told him, 'you're going to need a bigger sack than that.'"

Gonzales, who's been with the police department about five years, said he'd previously responded to three snake calls, but nothing like that.

"When I opened her bathroom door, there was a 12-foot python," Gonzales recalled. "I didn't know what I was going to do with a snake that large."

Cue Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws.

"You're gonna need a bigger sack!"

He asked dispatchers to send animal control officers. Shortly afterward, another College Station officer arrived, also armed with a paper bag, and soon the animal control officer showed up with a 10-gallon bucket.

"No one believed me that the snake was that big," Gonzales said.

The three officers settled on a city trash can as a temporary shelter for the creature, but getting it into the container was a struggle.

"It was pretty aggressive," Gonzales said. "It definitely didn't want to go into the trash can." Once inside the container, the snake was properly secured and left on the side of the home until animal control picked it up in the morning.

The snake was eventually reunited with it's owner. Veronica is doing okay...I guess:

Rodriguez was thankful the creature didn't harm her daughter's pets, but said the experience didn't leave her unscathed.

As someone who was "already afraid of everything," she's had trouble sleeping and has been especially jumpy, she said.

Her daughter, Kelsie Fowler, thought her mom was exaggerating about the size of the snake until shown a picture of it by The Eagle on Monday.

"I thought she was being over-dramatic, I thought it was just a grass snake or something," she said. "I'd probably pass out on the floor if I saw that."

Not surprisingly, Rodriguez said she's been overly cautious about making sure doors are closed since last week. "It really spooked me so bad," she said.

With a final word on this story, here's Samuel L. Jackson: