Nightmare comes true: UK woman nearly sat on 4ft python in her toilet bowl
A woman in Western England was in for a shocking surprise on October 9, after she stumbled across a python in her toilet bowl. Laura Tranter nearly sat on the snake's head, before she spotted the reptile and managed to leave the bathroom, unharmed. The story does have a happy ending, as her friend removed the python from the toilet and handed it over to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA).
Tranter reportedly encountered a python, but as we have reported in the past, other stranger snakes have often made the news. In July, we reported on the vast number of 'penis fish' sightings in Florida. In March 2020, a man in Gold Coast, Australia reportedly saw a snake attempting to make its way into his house, giving him quite a fright. In March 2021, popular YouTuber Nick Bishop was bitten on the face by a python he found at the Everglades National Park in Florida.
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But while snake sightings are pretty common in Australia and Florida, they aren't so common around Stourbridge, where Tranter lives. Located a few miles from the UK city of Birmingham, the quiet community made national headlines over the weekend after Tranter's story was reported.
The snake was 'stuck' in the toilet
If you are wondering how Tranter came across the reptile, it appears that the origin appeared to be the city's sewer system. According to Tranter, the snake was "actually stuck in my toilet, because it was so fat in the middle that it couldn't get out and couldn't get back." It's unclear how long the reptile was stuck there, but Tranter spotted it at around 5:30 am when she went to the bathroom.
"It scared the hell out of me, I nearly sat on the thing. Its head was just resting on the seat," she told The Sun. "I shut the toilet door and thought, have I really seen that, so I double-checked if it was real - but I really thought I was hallucinating." Initially, Tranter attempted to call the RSPCA, a British charity, but they didn't open till 7:00 am. Unsure what to do, Tranter went to her friend's house. "She was so confused she asked if I'd been drinking," Tranter recalled.
Thankfully, her friend also had a solution. She called up a friend Steve, whose brother Dan was a snake enthusiast. A short while later, Dan arrived at Tranter's house and began to work on getting the reptile out. "We couldn't actually get it out, so we had to put washing up liquid down the toilet and then flush it to help get it out," Tranter said. Eventually, the four-foot-long python was rescued, and handed over to the RSPCA, without further incident.
But that still begs the question - how did a python get into the community? "Steve and Dan think that someone might have let it out after keeping it as a pet and deciding they didn't want it, and it had got into the sewer somehow," Tenter said. Who that person is though, we may never know.