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Two radio show hosts in Forrest City, Arkansas were unable to leave their radio station after they discovered a snake "rattling and shaking" on a door handle of the building.
The snake was seen slithering on the handlebar of the glass door in a video of the incident captured by Lamont Swanigan, one of the two men who host a gospel radio program, shared with Arkansas' THV11.
They were trapped inside while waiting for the police to arrive to provide assistance. "Y'all. This is real. We cannot get out," Swanigan said in the video.
Swanigan said he was nearly prepared to spend the night at the station, yelling: "Look at his tongue, Kimble! Ew! Ew! No, sir!
"Man, you laughing. I'm serious. Don't do that, man!" Swanigan told the other radio host, Miles Kimble, who tapped the glass with a golf club in a bid to shake the snake off the handlebar.
"Leave that thing alone until the police get here! Leave him alone! You can hear him rattling! That's a rattlesnake. Look at him rattling," Swanigan claimed in the video.
"Don't know where he came from...you could hear him rattling and shaking," Swanigan said.
Drama ensued again when Kimble partially opened the door after a police officer arrived and managed to get the snake onto the ground. Kimble attempted to poke the snake to scare it away.
Swanigan shouted: "No, Kimble! He's fixing to come in! Oh, Lord, he done came in!" while running towards the back of the room.
The pair were eventually able to leave the station after the police officer killed the snake.
Asked if he knew what type of snake it was, Swanigan told THV11: "I was too busy running."
The Arkansas Game & Fish Commission says: "It is illegal to kill snakes in Arkansas unless they pose an immediate threat to people, pets or property.
"Most cases of snakebites are the result of people accidentally stepping on an unseen snake or purposefully agitating or trying to kill it."
Lori Monday, a regional educator with the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission, says misidentifying venomous snakes could potentially put them at unnecessary risk.
Monday explains: "A common misconception is that all venomous snakes have slit or 'cat's eye' pupils. That may be true for rattlesnakes, copperheads and cottonmouths, but the coral snake which is a venomous snake native to Arkansas has round pupils.
"And if you're close enough to tell what kind of pupil they have, you're probably getting too close to the snake," she adds.
About the writer
Soo Kim is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. She covers various lifestyle stories, specializing in Read more