A San Diego woman got the fright of her life when a 5-1/2-foot snake slid out of a toilet bowl inside her office building.
Stephanie Lacsa, an employee at Vertical PR + Marketing, experienced the nightmare on Wednesday, the Associated Press reported. Officials are attempting to figure out how the boa constrictor wound up inside a toilet through a down-pipe in a San Diego office building.
"This is every person's worst nightmare," Lacsa said. "I'm second guessing everywhere. When I went home last night, this morning. I'm hoping this kind of subsides after a while but, I mean, you don't go to the restroom and expect creatures to come out, much less a 5-foot boa constrictor."
On Tuesday, Lacsa decided to plunge the toilet after noticing that the water level had risen higher than usual in one of bowls on the second-floor restroom, she told San Diego County authorities.
But midway during the process, a snake shockingly popped up and flicked its tongue. Lacsa immediately ran out of the bathroom, taped the door shut and contacted Animal Services.
"I thought my eyes were deceiving me," Lacsa told KTLA 5. "But as soon as I saw the flicker of its tongue, I definitely knew that it was in fact a large snake heading straight towards me."
When an animal control officer arrived and opened the door to retrieve the snake, it was curled up behind the commode, the department said. Identified as a giant Colombian rainbow boa, the snake was described to be shedding and slightly underweight.
The whole incident was "stuff of urban legends," Dan DeSousa, deputy director of the Department of Animal Services, said, adding that he had never seen anything like it in his 25 years in animal services.
Although Animal Services doesn't know how the snake might have ended up in the toilet, they claim it belongs to a man who lives in the same building, the New York Daily News reported.
Currently, it is under the care of an animal care facility after having been treated by a veterinarian. However if the reptile is not claimed by an owner by Friday, the snake will be transferred to a reptile rescue group.
"We are hoping that someone comes forward and says, 'Um, I lost my snake,'" DeSousa said.
