Bold snake freaks out homeowner by pressing itself to glass on front door of NC home

Snakes are rascals when it comes to showing up in awkward places and a creepy example happened days ago at a home in southwest North Carolina.

Don Pullen of Robbinsville, about 200 miles west of Charlotte, shared a photo of the encounter on Facebook. He included the briefest of explanations: “Found this one at my front door. Scared the S out of me!”

Pullen’s photo shows the snake boldly pressed against windows on his front door, as if defying anyone to open it.

This was the second time Pullen dealt with the snake that day, he said.

“About 15 minutes earlier, I knocked it off the side of the house. It was going after a bird nest on my downspout,” he wrote.

Pullen did not say what came next, but he was clearly being cautious. He shared the photo with the N.C. Snake Identification & Education Facebook group, which is devoted to identifying snakes in the state.

The 37,000 members of the group have pretty much seen it all, but Pullen’s photo touched a nerve, racking up nearly 1,000 reactions, comments and shares.

The members easily identified the snake as a nonvenomous and harmless gray rat snake, a tree-climbing species that grows to 6 feet on average.

However, several people debated whether “harmless” was an accurate word, given where the snake was found. Some joked this is how snakes act “when they want in.”

“It’s funny how you all call them harmless!! I would have had a heart attack,” Caroline Landrum wrote.

“Seeing that would slow most everyone down! Like seeing HP on the interstate,” Teresa Waynick McCauley posted.

“Whoa I would have fainted,” Becky Flythe Watts said.

This story was originally published August 2, 2021 at 9:50 AM with the headline "Bold snake freaks out homeowner by pressing itself to glass on front door of NC home."