7-Foot-Long Snake Slithers Onto Woman’s Roof, Video Shows

A Connecticut woman was terrified after finding a black rat snake — estimated to be 7-foot-long — slithering onto the roof of her home in Farmington. Linda Bertolette spotted the snake twisting and contorting its lengthy body up the side of the home Monday.

“We had an unexpected visitor, an unwelcome visitor: A giant black rat snake,” she told NBC Connecticut. “I was appalled at the size of it and how aggressive it was... It looked like a video that was taken in the Amazon jungle, not in Connecticut.”

Bertolette said that her teenage daughter was the one who captured footage of the reptile.

The woman said the snake climbed up a 2-story portico and then went under the roof. She said the roof area where the serpent disappeared is an attic for mechanicals. However, in the video, it appears to find its way to the home’s gutter.

Bertolette said she called an exterminator as she thought the snake found a way to enter her home.

“You go to bed at night and you’re listening for slithering if you can even imagine that noise,” Bertolette said. “I was ready to bail. I was pretty much ready to put the house on the market.”

When the exterminator arrived Tuesday, he inspected the house and said the rat snake didn’t make its way into her home.

“Ever since the exterminator came and assured me that it did not make a home in our attic and that the roof is tight and he couldn’t find any holes I feel much better about the whole thing,” Bertolette told NBC Connecticut.

Rat snakes are non-venomous and typically found in the fields of many places across the country, including Connecticut, South Carolina, Kansas and Oklahoma, according to the National Wildlife Federation.

“Black rat snakes are excellent swimmers and climbers. They will use these skills to catch a variety of food, from bird eggs to frogs,” the federal agency wrote on its website. “They are the snake most likely to be seen around buildings hunting for rodents, amphibians, and young birds. Black rat snakes are constrictor snakes and will use their body to suffocate their prey.”