DAILY RECORD (York, Pennsylvania) 22 August 10 Black snake a surprise guest in Fawn Township home (Teresa McMinn)
Rose Stike was in the upstairs bathroom of her Fawn Township home Friday to do her hair when she heard something fall on the other side of the shower curtain and into the tub.
"I moved the (shower) curtain. When I looked down, I noticed there was something black on the faucet," she said. "It looked like a string."
But as her eyes followed the black cord upward, she realized it was a massive black snake that had wrapped its tail around her tub fixture and raised its body in a vertical stance, looking her in the eye.
"He was perched on his tail . . . up in my face," she said. "I literally froze. Then I realized what it was, and I started screaming."
She ran downstairs and her husband, Joe, ran up to the bathroom.
"(Joe) yelled, 'You are not gonna believe how big this snake is,'" Rose Stike said. "We were really taken aback."
Rose Stike called a number of animal rescue organizations and pest control companies, but no one was available to help.
"All we wanted to do was put it back out where he belonged," Rose Stike said.
Meanwhile, the snake was in attack mode. It got more and more aggressive, irritated and threatening.
"The snake was huge . . . and it was crazy," Rose Stike said, adding that she and her husband often see snakes in woods nearby but have never seen one in their house, where they've lived for 13 years. "It was a nightmare."
Joe Stike, who described himself as "not really a snake guy," closed himself in the bathroom with the reptile to prevent it from wandering into the rest of their home. The couple were primarily concerned the snake could make its way into their daughter's room.
At one point, the snake crawled up the shower wall and extended itself along the shower curtain rod.
Joe Stike said he used a grabber device -- a contraption made to reach jars from high shelves -- to try to catch the snake to return it to the wild, but the beast was too large, powerful and angry.
He yelled for his wife to fetch the hatchet.
"I would have held him in the tub until help could come, but he kept coming at me," Joe Stike said. "It was either him or me, that's the way I look at it."
Black snake a surprise guest in Fawn Township home