Next time you need to use a toilet in Texas, you might want to take a look before you sit down. A Texas man in Bee County is feeling lucky he didn’t sit on his toilet one day this June. A few weeks ago, Wade Vielock made a terrifying discovery that, as he told KSAT.com, “took at least six years off my life.” Vielock discovered a toilet snake. That’s right, he was shocked to see a huge snake slithering from the bowl of his toilet.
It was actually Vielock’s son who spotted the five-to-six-foot-long indigo snake. Vielock was cleaning the bathroom when the boy alerted him to the snake rising halfway out of the toilet bowl, stretching itself toward a window. A panicked Vielock dashed out of the bathroom, his cleaning chore forgotten.
Photo: Facebook/Bee County Sheriff’s Office
The eastern indigo is nonvenomous, but that fact is of little immediate comfort when it startles you by rising out of your toilet. The species is also the longest native snake on the continent. It’s immune to the venom of rattlesnakes. In fact, it eats rattlesnakes, overpowering them with its muscular jaws. The indigo snake is very useful in keeping rattlesnake populations down, but it’s still an unnerving sight, even when witnessed in the great outdoors, where it belongs. To see such a creature under Vielock’s circumstances might understandably turn your hair gray all of a sudden.
Making matters even more frustrating, the federal government lists the species as “threatened” and protected. What does that mean? It means that “individuals who harm or harass the indigo snake may be subject to fines and jail terms.” That’s right, if this monster of a snake slithers out of your toilet, Uncle Sam wants you to be sure not to harass it.
Photo: Facebook/Josey Lane Dentistry
After calming down, Vielock made a call to the sheriff’s department. Deputy Lindsay Scotten arrived on scene to handle the situation. By then, the snake had taken refuge in the bathroom vanity. The brave deputy didn’t even bother to put on gloves. She grabbed the snake with her bare hands and removed it from the vanity, then carried it out of the house.
The snake was set free back into the brush. “There has been an increase in snake calls this year due to weather,” the sheriff’s office noted in their Facebook post. “Residents are encouraged to be aware of their surroundings.” Disturbingly enough, this isn’t the first time we’ve covered news of a toilet snake in Texas. Remember, Texans, look before you sit down, unless you want your morning constitutional to turn into a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark (“Toilet snakes—why did it have to be toilet snakes?”).
