Python Uses Bathroom in Woman's Home

A College Station Woman Found a Twelve-Foot Python in Her Freaking Bathtub

by Dan Solomon

Fri May 16, 2014 11:14 am

If Jaws made us never want to get into the ocean again, this story makes us never want to take another bath: earlier this month, fifty-year-old single mother Veronica Rodriguez of College Station discovered a twelve-foot python kickin' it (figuratively speaking) in her bathtub after having briefly left the backdoor open to put her pet guinea pigs in their cages. As The Eagle paper in Bryan-College Station reports:

"As soon as I turned on the light, that's when I saw it," she said. "It was crawling into my tub."
Immediately, she slammed the door and ran outside. While her mother called Rodriguez's brother to see if he could go help, Rodriguez said she called 911 and soon College Station officer Tony Gonzales arrived.
"When the officer showed up, he came with a brown paper sack," she recalled. "I told him, 'you're going to need a bigger sack than that.'"
Gonzales, who's been with the police department about five years, said he'd previously responded to three snake calls, but nothing like that.
"When I opened her bathroom door, there was a 12-foot python," Gonzales recalled. "I didn't know what I was going to do with a snake that large."

"You're going to need a bigger sack than that" is the sort of pithy statement that would make a great line in a movie a python terrorizing a Texas college town, but the tale of Rodriguez and the snake—and her guinea pigs—lacked the sort of drama that would have made it a blockbuster. Thankfully for Rodriguez and her daughter, as well as the tiny prey animals they keep as pets, no physical injuries were incurred.
That python may have believed that trio of guinea pigs would make a tasty appetizer, but Rodriguez had every reason to be terrified. While a fully-grown woman is an unlikely source of food for a python, it's not technically impossible for a snake that size to swallow a human being whole. As the Discovery Channel's Mythbusters explains: 

Although there have been reports of children and animals - including deer! - being swallowed by large pythons, it's very unlikely that a fully grown human being would allow him or herself to get ingested by a serpent. "You'd have to be passed out beyond words," says Snell.

("Passed out beyond words" is not exactly an uncommon condition in a college town...)
The actual owner of the python—who somehow managed to emerge from the news cycle about this massive snake that intruded in a neighbor's bathtub without being identified—was able to reclaim the snake without incident. All's well that ends well, and aside from the terror that Rodriguez will presumably encounter every time she enters her own bathroom for at least the next few weeks, everything turned out all right here. 

There Are Good Young People in the World

4/18/2014
NEW PALTZ, N.Y. (AP) — For all the screaming and carrying on, their neighbors thought they'd won the lottery. But it was a lumpy old sofa stuffed with $40,000 in cash that had three young roommates raising a ruckus.

And here's the other side of the ticket: They returned the money to the 91-year-old widow whose couch had been given away.

"We just pulled out envelopes and envelopes," said Cally Guasti, a social worker with Family of Woodstock who shares an apartment with two friends in New Paltz, 75 miles north of New York City. "My mouth was literally hanging open — everybody's was — it was an unfathomable amount."

Guasti told The Associated Press on Thursday that she and her friends had bought the beat-up couch and a chair for $55 at a Salvation Army thrift shop in March. They noticed the arm cushions were weirdly lumpy. Then, one night in April, one of them, State University of New York at New Paltz student Reese Werkhoven, opened a zipper on one arm and found an envelope.

It contained $4,000 in bubble-wrapped bills.

Guasti, Werkhoven and roommate Lara Russo opened the other arm zipper and started mining the treasure stashed inside. They counted it up: $40,800.

"Honestly, I was a little overwhelmed," Russo said. "I wanted to put it back in the couch and like re-find it in the morning when I can process it better."

Gausti said they spread the money on the bed and started counting.

"And we were screaming," she said "In the morning, our neighbors were like, 'We thought you won the lottery.'"

Mixed in with the cash was a deposit slip with a woman's name on it. Werkhoven called her the next morning.

"She said, 'I have a lot of money in that couch and I really need it,'" Guasti said.

They drove to the home of the woman, who turned out to be the elderly woman. She cried in gratitude when they gave her the cash she had hidden away.

The woman's family had donated the couch to the Salvation Army while she was having health problems.

"It's not our money, said Werkhoven, of New York City. "We didn't have any right to it."

Guasti said the cash simply wasn't theirs. "I think if any of us had used it, it would have felt really wrong."