Augusta Woman 'Freaked Out' After Finding 18 Snakes In Bedroom

AUGUSTA, GA — Trish Wilcher was minding her business Sunday night when she went to pick up what she thought was a piece of fuzz on her bedroom floor carpet.

Everything was fine until the “fuzz” moved and triggered an unsettling chain of discovery that led the Augusta woman to find 18 Dekay’s brown snakes that had taken up occupancy in the bedroom. The snakes, which are described as being "shy," had migrated to her neighborhood after some nearby land had been cleared, Wilcher told Patch in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

Wilcher told Patch on Tuesday an animal control specialist she identified on Facebook on Monday as “Trapper Dan” identified the snakes as the Dekay’s snake. The species is harmless, non-venomous and is more commonly known as the brown grass snake. The average length of the snake is anywhere between 9 inches to 13 inches, and it is known to be "small and secretive."

The snakes' tendency not to harm anything or anyone did little to settle Wilcher's state of mind, which she aptly described as "freaked out."

After discovering the first snake, which blended into her bedroom brown carpet around 10:30 p.m. Sunday, Wilcher said her husband, Max, found 17 babies and the “momma” snake after tearing her bedroom apart on Sunday. The couple spent two hours making sure their room was free of snakes before retiring for the night, Wilcher said.

Max Wilcher used a trash grabber to collect the snakes, which he placed in a linen bag and released outdoors. His wife, meanwhile, wanted no part of the snake-collecting adventure after seeing what she thought may have been a worm after the "fuzz" moved.

"Honey, we've got snakes," Trish Wilcher screamed to her husband, who was upstairs and approximately 70 feet away at the time.

In a series of Facebook posts, she documented the search for more babies, first posting she had located eight of them and posting a short time later the search had turned up 13 before finally locating four more babies and the momma, which were under her bed.

Wilcher said the momma snake had just given birth to her babies, which accounted for the close proximity between the female snake, which was about 12-15 inches in length. Within a short time, the babies had started to venture out, including three which made their way under one of the Oriental rugs in the couple's bedroom.

Wilcher said the female snake appeared a bit scared, knowing that her babies had been taken from her.

Wilcher expects the female snake made her way into the house through a hole where the couple had made some plumbing repairs but had not completely finished the job. She expects the momma snake had only been in the house a matter of hours before she gave birth to her babies.

“We were the home spot for her litter,” Wilcher wrote on Facebook after describing why the land-clearing project made her home a breeding ground for the snakes. “(I’m) still not confident that we have seen the last of those things. Scared shirtless to be honest!"

She continued: “No sleep tonight …. just glad I saw that little tiny piece of what I thought was fuzz and went to pick it up!”

Even with “Trapper Dan” coming to the rescue Monday to make sure that no more snakes were in the house, Wilcher admitted she had not yet found a way to rest easy. While female snakes can have up to 40 babies at a time, Trapper Dan told Wilcher because of the momma snake's size he doubts the couple will find any more.

“I am struggling to move about the house much less sit down anywhere!!! I may need a cardiologist after this !!!” she wrote on Facebook.

Asked Tuesday morning if her heart had settled yet, Wilcher acknowledges she was still struggling.

“Hardly,” she wrote in a Facebook messenger exchange with Patch, adding an emoji that can only be described as anxious.

Wilcher said that her husband has already slept in the master bedroom downstairs where Sunday's snake discovery took place. Wilcher, for her part, has no plans to join her husband any time soon.

"I will not go back down there," she said. "It's going to take a long time because that's one of my biggest fears in life is for a snake to be in my room and possibly crawl up on me.

"I'm petrified, I'm scared, I don't know how to react. ...But I told (Max) that when it comes to sleeping, we're going to be the odd couple."