Family Discovers Rattlesnake Clogging Their Toilet, And Then Find An Entire Army Of Them

Discovering something dangerous lurking inside your toilet is usually regarded as the low point of your day. Whether it’s a spider, snake or baby alligator, a deadly intruder sitting in your porcelain throne is not a welcome sight, but for the McFadden family in the Texas city of Abilene, finding a rattlesnake in their toilet was only the precursor to something far more horrifying.

Nathan Hawkins is the owner of Big Country Snake Removal, and earlier this week, a call from the McFadden family was the precursor to an astonishing snake invasion. Upon arriving at the McFadden household, Nathan was surprised to find a dead snake, but things only got worse from there. 

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The first to discover the deadly reptile taking a trip through the McFadden plumbing system was young Isac McFadden, who woke up that morning to use the bathroom and was greeted by a rattlesnake. Isac called his mother, Cassie McFadden, who instructed her son to fetch a shovel, and killed the rattlesnake before calling Nathan the snake handler. With over 20 years’ worth of experience in handling snakes, Nathan is well attuned to the behavior of the scaly reptiles, and when he arrived at the McFadden house, he wisely performed a thorough inspection of the house.

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

Following his intuition, Nathan Hawkins decided to look inside an old storm cellar located on the McFadden property. Sure enough, Nathan’s hunch proved to be correct: there were 13 rattlesnakes making themselves at home in the cellar. Nathan says this is due to a change in rattlesnake behaviour over the winter months.

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

Having not seen a snake on the property for many years, the McFadden were probably horrified at the discovery of this nest, but Nathan wasn’t finished just yet. Searching underneath the house, Nathan discovered a corner with a sheet of metal, and he knew that there were more snakes to be found. Sure enough, there was a second nest of snakes living underneath the house, and armed with just a flashlight and a pair of tongs, Nathan caught another 10 rattlesnakes, including five babies.

Finding 24 rattlesnakes in a house sounds like a pretty awful experience for you, me or the McFadden family, but for Nathan Hawkins and his company, it’s simply another day at the office. Big Country Snake Removal posted pictures of the snake invasion on their Facebook page. They urged their followers to keep up to date on their snake inspections, even if everything seems okay.

“How is this possible? It’s actually quite simple. Rattlesnake are secretive and can be very cryptic. They rely heavily on their camouflage. This is simply how they survive. Just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

For many citizens of Texas, poisonous snakes are a very real threat; the rattlesnake is just one of four deadly species of reptile lurking in the Lone Star State, with copperheads, cottonmouths and corals making snake inspections a necessity for those living in the Southern United States. The McFadden family were certainly grateful for the Big Country Snake Removal company, and I hope that everyone living in Abilene and around Texas is ensuring their home is snake-proof. This sounds terrifying.