One lucky man escaped physical harm of an unexpected scale.
Brian Walsh evaded getting bitten when he reached for a black snake that he confused for a garden hose outside of his North Carolina home, reports WBTV.
Walsh stopped himself just in time — about a foot away from the serpent.
Even though the snake wasn’t venomous, it got a lot of attention on Facebook group Snake Identification, where Walsh’s wife Tiffany posted a photo of it.
“Please ---- tell me this is a Black rat snake!? We live in NC by a large pond. Thanks!” Tiffany captioned her photo of the animal slithering near the base of a tree by the water.
“It is and a large one at that,” one user commented.
“This is a big mature snake for sure,” another wrote.
Other users also called the animal “huge” and “enormous.”
While six feet is on the long end for an eastern rat snake of its kind, the species can grow to be bigger. An 8-foot, 4-inch rat snake was once documented, according to The National Wildlife Federation.
Two of the four acres of the family’s Huntersville property consist of ponds, making it an attraction for the reptiles.
“The sheer size of it! At first, it completely caught me off guard and not going to lie — terrified,” Brian Walsh told McClatchy News in an email. “We’ve come across black rat snakes before, never this large.”
Walsh was both terrified and mesmerized by the animal, adding: “It looks even larger in motion because it’s almost fully extended. The muscle movement is mesmerizing, how it moves so effortlessly.”
In the end, the family let the snake roam its property freely for its own pragmatic reasons.
“Let it stay! It’s harmless and helps keep mice and other undesirable snakes at bay,” Tiffany Walsh said in an email to WBTV. “It’s clearly been around a long time, so it must keep its distance most of the time.”