A New York man got the fright of his life when a 1.2m snake slithered out of his toilet as he got ready for work.
Allen Shepard was in the bathroom of his 19th floor apartment and had begun brushing his teeth on Tuesday morning when he saw the California Kingsnake move out of the bowl.
"I came out [of the bathroom] and closed the door and I got a broom. The snake was getting up on top of the rim, ready to strike," Mr Shepard told radio station 1010 WINS.
Mr Shepard said the green and yellow snake then attacked the broom and would not let go.
The Staten Island resident called his building manager and he was put in touch with Kenneth Rosenthal from the Clogged Response Service Group.
Mr Rosenthal said that he had to pull firmly on the snake to remove it from the toilet.
"I pulled a little more, and I kept a steady pull on him, and it kept coming out. I said, 'When is this thing going to end?' I already had about 2.5 feet (0.7m) of him out."
Eventually, the non-venomous snake was put in a cooler before bringing transported to a sanctuary in Manhattan.
The rogue snake was likely to be a missing pet in the Staten Island apartment complex that had escaped through the plumbing.
It is not the first time that a snake has found its way into a New York toilet — a Brooklyn woman found a 2.1m python in 2007.
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