Family Finds Rattlesnake in Toilet, Plus 23 More Underneath Their House

Buckle up — this is the stuff of nightmares.

For the past 20 years, Nathan Hawkins has been working with snakes in the small town of Buffalo Gap, Texas.

Hawkins is the owner of Big Country Snake Removal and revealed that he recently received a frantic call from a family in Abilene about a rattlesnake peaking its head out of a toilet. While he thought it was “very unusual,” it wasn’t something he was too worried about handling.

“They’are actually very, very amazing creatures that are really misunderstood,” Hawkins told CBS News. “There are irrational fears around them.”

Young Isac Mcfadden got up to use the bathroom Tuesday morning and found an unwelcome surprise — a snake.

The little boy’s mother told her son to grab a shovel and when he returned with it, she killed it.

Hawkins was surprised to find a dead snake when he arrived, but he removed it from the toilet and asked the family if he could do a quick house inspection.

“It’s kind of intuition,” Hawkins said. “If you do this long enough, you kind of understand snakes and what they do during certain times of the year.”

Hawkins first looked inside an old storm cellar and found 13 snakes huddled in the corner.

“With rattlesnakes, western diamondbacks in particular, they’re real communal animals during cooler months. They tend to live together in dens.”

Hawkins then got down on his hands and knees and crawled around underneath the house. When he found a corner with old sheet metal, he predicted he would find another den.

With a flashlight in one hand and a snake tong in the other, he caught another 10 rattlesnakes, including 5 babies, in that location, adding up to 24 snakes in total.

Over the course of a year, Hawkins has caught several hundred snakes. He fields about 50 to 75 calls a day — some just questions, others requesting help.

Hawkins is proud his business doesn’t kill any of the creatures they catch.

“I get to keep snakes alive that would typically end up with a gunshot wound,” Hawkins said.

More: Snakes On A Plane Just Became Terrifyingly Real | Two Enormous Snakes Crash Into Man’s Kitchen For A Wrestling Match | Watch A Highly Venomous Black-Banded Sea Snake Chows Down On Moray Eel

Originally posted on Womanista.com.