Brooklyn man bit by snake found in tub as he tries to flush it down toilet: ‘Too much drama!’
Ellen Moynihan, Rocco Parascandola | New York Daily News
A Brooklyn man was bit by a snake as he tried to flush it down the toilet after finding it coiled up in his bathtub, the shocked victim told the Daily News in an exclusive interview.
“All God’s creations have a purpose — but it was a little too much drama for a Wednesday during a heatwave,” Steve Nahama, 63, said.
The slithering attacker, an 18-inch corn snake that looks like a dangerous copperhead but has no venom, was removed by NYPD cops and taken to an animal shelter in Queens.
The incident — the second in the city this month — happened in Nahama’s apartment building on Ocean Parkway near Avenue H in Midwood.
“I leave one shower door open and I said ‘OK, there’s something on the floor (of the tub),’ said Nahama, who works in a food pantry. “I didn’t have my glasses on and I said ‘That looks like something in a figure eight’.”
Once Nahama got his glasses and could see the intruder clearly he paced the bathroom, unsure how to proceed.
“It was like this really cute thing like you see in Petco. Its head was reared up,” he said. “I tried to grab it with a scissor.”
Panicked Nahama initially tried to behead the snake.
“I had to do impulsively what I thought had to be done,” he said.
“I was going grab by it the head. I didn’t know what to do. I just didn’t want it to get out in my apartment,” he said. “I’ve been having problems with mice, that’s bad enough. Maybe it came because of the mice.”
Cops responding to a 6:20 a.m. 911 call were told by Nahama that he tried to get the snake into the toilet in an attempt to flush it away.
“I figured if I do grab it and flush it, maybe it likes water,” Nahama said.
But the snake responded by biting Nahama on his index finger and escaping back to its new home in his bathtub, at which point Nahama called for help.
“It’s so unbelievable how fast this thing moves,” he said of the snake. “I got pecked and it’s still in the tub and I’m looking out my window praying,” said Nahama.
“People said I should have thrown a towel on it. I should have caught it by the neck like ‘Wild Kingdom,‘” he said.
Nahama has lived in the building since 1986.
“This thing was a half to 3/4 inch circumference,” he said of the snake. “My only theory would be that it came through a little drain.”
Nahama gave police a clear plastic pretzel jar to tote away the reptile.
“If you’ve think you’ve seen it all ??” Nahama posted on Facebook next to a picture of the snake in his tub. “Fugggedanout it …Never a dull moment.”
He went on to thank the NYPD and EMS for their swift response. He was treated at the scene for a minor wound to his finger from the bite.
Corn snakes are typically found on the east coast of the United States and are most plentiful in the south. They are constrictors, first biting their prey and then wrapping their bodies around their intended meal to squeeze them.
On June 5, a 5-foot-long boa constrictor was rescued from an Upper West Side backyard.
A neighbor in the building on W. 87th St. near Columbus Ave. spotted the snake sliding down a gate and trying to go through an open window of a basement apartment, police said at the time.
That neighbor called the tenant who lives in the basement apartment, who wasn’t home at the time.
NYPD Emergency Service Unit cops were called to the backyard of the apartment, where they worked to get the reptile into a pillowcase, video released by police shows.
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