Snake Found in Toaster After Illinois Woman Moves to New Home: "Terrified"

Moving houses can be a stressful period at the best of times. More so when your new home is plagued by snakes.

In just two weeks, a woman who recently moved to Macoupin County, Illinois, has come across three different snakes in her home. After finding a snake in her toaster on April 2, she reached out to her friend, Aaron Jennifer Key, for help.

Key shared a photo of the toaster snake to the Facebook group Illinois Snake Identification and Education. "She is terrified of snakes and looking for natural deterrents," Key said. "She doesn't care if they are in the yard, it's expected, but not in her house."

The post caught the attention of herpetologist Nathan Kutok who studies the biogeography, distribution and conservation of Illinois's amphibians and reptiles.

"That animal was the first documented plains garter snake in Macoupin County since 1947," Kutok told Newsweek. "That's not to say they're inherently rare. It's just in an under-sampled part of the state and a region that needs a lot of work."

Plains garter snakes are a medium-sized non-venomous snake species—ranging from 1 to 2 feet—that can be identified by the bright orange to yellow stripe along the backs of their black scaly bodies. They can be found throughout the North American plains, from northernmost Texas to southern Manitoba.

"The plains garter snake has a fairly wide range," Kutok said. "They can be fairly common where they occur, but they're a species that is largely associated with black soil prairie, of which we have lost the vast majority of in Illinois, so these animals tend to be sporadically distributed and relegated to vacant lots and railroad right-of-ways within urban centers in the central portion of the state.

Kutok said that most of the black soil prairie has been lost to agriculture and development and, although it was once found throughout the state, it is now one of the rarest habitats in Illinois. "We have approximately one-tenth of 1 percent (0.01 percent) of our remnant prairie intact."

The plains garter snake sightings in Macoupin County do not necessarily indicate a re-colonization of the area by the species, but rather an increase in reporting. "It just takes an observation like this to catch the eyes of those who are interested in these species to follow up on these records," Kutok said.

It is not clear why the snake made its home in the woman's toaster, but Kutok said that the snakes appear to have slithered in from an unoccupied property next door.

The snakes are completely harmless to humans, but Key said the sight had still "panicked" the homeowner. "I do know the entire toaster was tossed outside," Key told Newsweek.

Kutok said that the best way to keep snakes off your property is to make it less hospitable to them. "There's no deterrent that's better than just keeping a clean, up-kept yard," he said. "By that I mean having grass mowed, having an absence of surface cover which snakes can hide beneath, and thereby their prey."