Snake in a Crib: Mom Finds Serpent in Infant's Bed
June 11, 2008 — -- One New York mother received an unexpected and unwanted surprise when she went to check on her crying infant only to discover a snake wrapped around her daughter's leg.
Cari Abatemarco was visiting her parents on Long Island, N.Y., when she put her 7-month-old daughter, Isabella, down for a nap.
"About an hour later she started crying. I never left the room from the time I put her down. I peeked around from the bed, we were perpendicular. I see something coiled around her leg," Abatemarco said today on "Good Morning America."
Initially, Abatemarco, who was sitting in the room's corner, was confused about what was happening.
"As I'm waking up, I'm thinking, 'Can this really be a snake?'"
The answer was yes.
"In the seconds it took me to get up and get to her, I was fully aware, saw the snake. From that moment I could say I just freaked out," Abatemarco said.
She added, "Luckily, after I picked her up, the snake loosened its grip on her leg. … We ran to the back corner of the room, far away from it."
Abatemarco's sister and uncle could hear her screaming, she said. "[They were] saying I was making unhumanlike hooting noises. My uncle saw the snake and actually used a back scratcher to uncoil it from around the crib."
The frightened mom took her daughter to the doctor following the incident and said they will monitor her progress, but she has no injuries.
Luckily, the serpent turned out to be a nonpoisonous California king snake.
"[I was] completely relieved but equally scared, because it is a constrictor. And the way it was coiled around her leg, it could have just been in position to have started to possibly eating her leg," she said.
Abatemarco said she had no doubt that the slithery visitor made its way into the home by nestling inside the mattress, not entering through a window.
"My parents have new windows. We rarely open them. They are big on air conditioners. If a window is ever propped open there's always a screen closed," Abatemarco said, who's convinced that the snake somehow made its way into the mattress. "There's an opening you can insert your arm and feel the springs inside the mattress."
