Police in Alabama recently responded to a bizarre call that is the stuff of nightmares: someone found a snake stuck in their toilet.

According to a Facebook post from the Eufaula Police Department, a homeowner called 9-1-1 asking for help removing a large snake from their toilet.

The post contained pictures of the snake inside the toilet bowl as proof.

“We never know from one day to the next what kind of call we will receive during our shift,” the department wrote. “However a snake in the toilet wasn’t on our list of possibilities.”

Officers removed the ‘unwelcome visitor” and relocated him to a “more suitable habitat.”

Police say the culprit was a nonvenomous gray rat snake.

“In the snake’s defense, he was just trying to reach the homeowner about their car’s extended warranty,” officers joked.

In its first five days, the post had been shared at least 9,000 times and received over 1,200 comments.

 “Well no more using the toilet for me. I’ll just hold it forever,” one person wrote.

“Now I am going to be paranoid about going to the bathroom,” another person commented.

As for how the snake ended up in the toilet, a Australian wildlife expert told the BBC in a 2016 interview that snakes can access plumbing pipes from the sewers while hunting for prey such as rats.

“The snakes just follow the trail of the rats,” Geoff Jacobs with Queensland Wildlife Solutions said. “All over the world rats go down in sewers and the snakes go in there after them.”