PALM BEACH POST (Florida) 15 September 08 Forget on a plane, try snakes near the drain (Michael LaForgia
Ocean Ridge: Cue scary music.
Elena Trowell, a 22-year-old brunette from Georgia, slips into a warm bath in her duplex on Sunday morning, reclining as water tumbles over her feet.
She isn't looking at the faucet, at least not directly, but she registers a flicker from the waterspout, like a shadow dripping into the tub with her. A moment later she feels something slide against her toes.
She looks and, to her utter horror, discovers the stuff of urban legend: A skinny, foot-long snake had fallen from the faucet to her bath water, Trowell said, dismissing the opinions of utilities officials and animal experts who called such a thing impossible.
"I was screaming like I was being attacked," Trowell said Sunday evening. "I was so freaked out. Panicked."
Her shrieks brought her boyfriend, 26-year-old Bryan Litowich, tearing in to see what was wrong. With his help, Trowell pried open the tub's sliding glass door and danced yelping from the water.
The couple rushed to the kitchen and grabbed a Tupperware cereal container, returning to find another surprise. A second, bigger snake had fallen to the water beside the first one, Trowell said. And it was angry.
After some wrangling Litowich corralled the reptiles, which experts later said were probably corn snakes, based on photos. The couple eventually drove to a pet store, returning with a heat rock and a glass tank.
The immediate fate of the serpents decided, Trowell and Litowich were free to ponder another, more troubling question: How did snakes get into the pipes to begin with?
The answer, said utilities officials, is simple. They didn't.
"It's impossible for snakes to come out of a faucet. It's deliberately a completely enclosed system from end to end," said Michael Lowe, deputy director of utilities for the city of Boynton Beach, which pipes water to Ocean Ridge. Lowe noted the water in the pipes is pressurized at roughly 60 pounds per square inch and said he was confident Trowell was mistaken.
Yet Trowell maintained the snakes fell from the faucet.
Lowe acknowledged that Trowell called the city Sunday afternoon, and a form generated by the complaint listed Trowell's reason for calling as "snakes coming out of bathtub faucet." Trowell also reported the snakes to Ocean Ridge police, Detective Chris Yannuzzi said.
Like Lowe, animal control experts were skeptical of Trowell's story.
Joe Felegi, who owns Critter Control animal removal service in West Palm Beach, said his business handles three or four cases per month of animals crawling through plumbing into toilets and tubs.
What Trowell described is "almost impossible," Felegi said. "Usually they don't come from the water faucet, but they can come up through the drains."
"Now saying that," he added, "in my 20 years experience in dealing with wildlife conflicts, I have come to the conclusion anything is possible."
Forget on a plane, try snakes near the drain