Tucson woman finds snake in her toilet

Michelle Lespron's "hero" retrieved a coachwhip from her toilet after three attempts

TUCSON, Ariz. ( KYMA, KECY-TV ) - Michelle Lespron arrived home from a recent vacation and expected to relax.

“I’d been gone for four days and was looking forward to using my own restroom in peace. I lifted up the lid and he or she was curled up,” Lespron told The Associated Press. “Thank God the lid was closed.”

Inside her toilet was a coachwhip snake.

“Everybody has the same reaction: Oh my god that’s my worst nightmare,” she said.

Lespron says her father tried to wrangle the snake that same night but it slithered away. So, she called Rattlesnake Solutions the next morning.

"It is a fast, intelligent snake that does a lot of things," Bryan Hughes with Rattlesnake Solutions said. "It eats rattlesnakes, it climbs trees, it climbs houses it gets everywhere and does what it wants."

It took the handler — who Lespron called “my hero” — three tries to get the black and pink coachwhip snake firmly in his grasp. 

Fortunately for Lespron, the species is non-venomous. Still, she was taking no chances.

After her reptile run-in, Lespron used her guest bathroom for three weeks before feeling comfortable enough to go back to her own. And she no longer enters the bathroom in the dark, and always lifts the lid ever so slowly