Woman finds python in her bathroom in Sharon, Pennsylvania

Patrolman Troy Widmyer holds the ball python that Sharon police removed from the bathroom of a city resident early Tuesday morning.

Movie fans might think a snake in an apartment wouldn't have the shock value of the thriller "Snakes on a Plane." Just don't expect Debbie LaMotte to agree.

The Sharon woman said she had just answered the call of nature at about 4 a.m. Tuesday when "something on the floor" she hadn't noticed on the way into the bathroom caught her attention.

"At first I thought it was a scarf because it had such a beautiful pattern," the resident of Riverview Manor said. "I use a cane, so I reached out to touch it and that's when I saw its head move."

At that point, the 62-year old said, she found she could still move pretty fast and close the door in a hurry if she had to.

"It started poking its nose under the door while I was calling 911," LaMotte said, describing the snake she saw as "at least 4 feet long, and probably longer."

"They (dispatcher) told me to try to keep it contained until the police got here so I used my cane to do that," said the retiree who formerly worked in a medical billing office.

Three responding police weren't eager to use their hands to pick up the snake. One of them told LaMotte it was a constrictor. Police later identified it as a ball python, a snake that constricts, or squeezes, prey to kill it before swallowing its meal.

"I gave them my old lady grabber that I use to reach things in the closet and they used it to put the snake into a bag," LaMotte said.

She said she was startled at first but that her heart "really started racing" because of the shock of seeing a snake that shouldn't have been on the fifth floor of an apartment.

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