SNAKE IN A DRAIN: Kamloops area woman finds unlikely critter clogging her sink | iNFOnews | Thompson-Okanagan's News Source
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SNAKE IN A DRAIN: Kamloops area woman finds unlikely critter clogging her sink

This is what Suzanna and Jerry Fradette found in their drain on Dec. 30.
Image Credit: FACEBOOK / Suzanna Fradette

Sure, spiders, centipedes, ants and cockroaches can all be unwelcome house guests. But a snake in the drain? That's the stuff of nightmares, according to a woman who found bits of a snake's body had been the cause of a clogged sink.

Suzanna Fradette lives on a cattle ranch in the Deadman area near Savona with her husband Jerry and their two young children. For months, she thought dirty, muddy hands were the reason their sink was constantly dirty and sludgy.  

“We thought it has got to be just oddly shaped sludge, but it had body to it, it had scales... it was a snake,” Fradette says.

She says the issues first began a few months ago when their sink was completely clogged.

”I remember waking up once in the morning and nothing was going down the drain. I tried Drano in it, but nothing was going down,” Fradette says. “So I snaked the drain, and I might have killed the snake with the snake because then it cleared up.”

For the next few months, Fradette continued to clean the sludge appearing at the rim of the drain. It wasn’t until their youngest child stuck some toothbrushes down the drain on Dec. 30 that the couple found what had been hiding just out of sight.

“Jerry took the pipe apart to get the toothbrushes out and then pulled out what was the remnants of what would’ve been about a two- or three-foot snake,” Fradette says. “There’s not much that grosses me out being on a cattle ranch, but that grossed me out.”

Fradette says the body piece of the snake was about an inch and a half in diameter, and the family identified its scales as those belonging to a bull snake, also known as Pituophis catenife or gopher snake, according to B.C. Reptiles. She says these species are common in the area, but although the family is used to snakes and doesn’t mind the dirty work of a ranch, this incident grossed out both parents.

“He just used his hands, because it was right there and he thought it was just some cloth or sludge or something, and he handled it quite a bit because he didn’t believe that it was a snake,” Fradette says. “That man has had his hands in places you can’t even imagine, and he must have washed his hands about ten times. He was really thoroughly disgusted.”

Credit: FACEBOOK / Suzanna Fradette

The Fradettes live in a log home in an area between Cache Creek and Savona, with rocks stacked between the logs and the inner walls. She thinks the snake came in through a crack, lived in the walls and then made its way into the pipe system. Fradette thinks bits of the snake’s body may be stuck in other areas of their pipes and says they have noticed other plumbing problems since.

“The rest of our pipes are connected so when I snaked it I probably broke it up, so there’s probably remnants of it…. Our toilet has been having flushing problems since then too, so I wonder if there’s some of it in there,” Fradette says. “I have to find some time to go through the pipes and take them apart.”

Even more shocking to Fradette than having a snake in her pipes was the lack of a stench after the reptile had died.

“You think that it must smell but it didn’t smell, and that's one of the most shocking things that we did not smell it. It must have been the Drano, it must have broken it down to where it wouldn’t smell,” Fradette says. “The chances of it happening again I’m sure are slim to none but the fact that this happened once is something from nightmares… not in a million years would I think I’d be pulling a snake out of my drain.”

One tiny Fradette family member thought the discovery was pretty neat.

“The five-year-old thought it was the coolest thing ever,” Fradette says. “She couldn’t wait to tell her friends we pulled a snake out of the drain.”

— This story was corrected at 9:45 a.m. Jan. 8, 2020. The Deadman area is near Savona, not Chase. 


To contact a reporter for this story, email Jenna Wheeler or call (250) 819-6089 or email the editor. You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.

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