Man’s robot vacuum cleaner jams – then he finds an angry snake inside, photos show

An unlucky snake recently went head-to-head with a robot vacuum cleaner and lost, Texas photos show.

Dillon Wenberg was at his home in Lindale — roughly 120 miles east of Fort Worth — when he received a phone notification from his Roborock vacuum, at about midnight on Sept. 6, he told McClatchy News.

The machine’s brush was jammed, the message read.

Wenberg found the vacuum, flipped it over, and was surprised to find a snake caught up inside, wrapped around the roller bar with its head peeking out, photos show. And the snake was not happy, he said.

Wenberg has seen several snakes on his property over the summer, but this was the first to make it into his house, he said.

As he worked to free the reptile from its captivity, it only grew angrier, Wenberg said, though the tiny snake’s fury didn’t stop him.

“Once I got the snake out, (the vacuum) kept running and finished,” Wenberg said.

“After it sucked that up, I’d say money well spent,” he added.

Wenberg didn’t know what kind of snake it was, besides angry, but was confident it wasn’t venomous.

“I could tell from the pattern it was not a cottonmouth or copperhead, which are the two venomous snakes that are prevalent in the area,” Wenberg said.

He shared a picture of the snake on social media and learned it was likely a species of rat snake.

While rat snakes might be an unwelcome sight to some, they are not venomous and are generally beneficial, experts say.

Rat snakes are “great friends of the farmer,” according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, as they “love to eat mice, voles, cotton rats and the like.”

This story was originally published September 7, 2023 at 3:48 PM with the headline "Man’s robot vacuum cleaner jams – then he finds an angry snake inside, photos show."