Just when you think you’ve seen every slippery situation… Police officers in Clearwater, Florida, were called to a local apartment to extract a five-foot-long red-tailed boa constrictor from a couch. Terrifyingly, the snake had been a surprise stowaway inside the sofa, which the resident had recently purchased from a thrift store. After he spotted the scaly intruder near the couch, he somehow resisted calling 9-1-1 immediately, opting to leave his front door open in the hopes it would just slither out. When it instead retreated back into the furniture, Sergeant Lenshawn Price, Officer Ashley Hinkebein and Officer Azeen Sarkhosh were called to the scene. 

The officers carried the couch outside and, with the owner’s permission, cut into it to extract its occupant. Capturing the snake in a pillowcase, they drove it to a nearby pet store, where the undernourished and dehydrated fugitive could be cared for. 

Photos of the officers’ reptile-wrangling went viral, garnering inquiries from media outlets as far away as the U.K. and India. But Sergeant Price took it all in stride, saying that although she isn’t a fan of rodents or large dogs, she has no fear of snakes. 

“I had a pet snake in college and my son has a pet snake now,” she explained. “I actually called him when I saw the snake, just to confirm it wasn’t poisonous.”