Merry Chrisssstmas! Family finds SNAKE in their Christmas tree



Christmas trees are meant to conceal surprises - but one family were definitely not expecting what they found in theirs.



The Baine family from Zebulon, North Carolina discovered a snake lurking among the baubles in their festive fir.



Casey Baine, 34, took a video of the moment her husband Tony took the slithering creature from the tree.

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Surprise! Footage shot by the Baine family, shows the snake lurking in the tree. Their daughter spied the unwelcome guest as she turned on the lights

The couple’s six-year-old daughter Rachel spotted the snake while she was kneeling down to turn on the Christmas lights.



‘I screamed as loud as I could,’ she said. ‘He was gonna bite me.’

Luckily, the creature turned out to be a 12-inch corn snake and non-poisonous.



In fact, Tony, Rachel and her brother Eli wanted to keep the snake – and named him Tinsel ‘as he looked like a piece of tinsel in the tree’.

Friendly: Tony Baine held the 12-inch corn snake while his wife screamed

Curious: Rachel Baine, six, saw the snake in the tree as she turned on the lights. She soon discovered it was harmless - and told her parents she wanted to keep it



But Mrs Baine was having none of it – and Tinsel now lives in the woods near their home.



Mrs Baine, who filmed the snake on her iPhone, said: ‘[Tony] told me that there was a snake in the tree. And even when I saw, it was so still that I thought it was fake.



‘So I shook the tree a little bit and that's when he moved.



‘The snake wasn't poisonous and was probably harmless but it was still uninvited and unwelcome in our home.’

Family pet: Rachel plays with the snake, who the Baines named Tinsel

Harmless: Tony Baine with his children Rachel and Eli. All three wanted to keep Tinsel - but Casey Baine put her foot down and they returned it to the woods

On the film, Mr Baine can be seen wrangling with the snake while his wife screams. Gently handling the creature, he then shows his children, who are more than happy to pet it.



The family was particularly surprised to find the snake as they have an artificial tree, and ‘most would assume it would have been a live tree’.



The tree had been stored in a shelf in their garage.



‘We keep the tree in the garage,’ Mrs Baines explained. ‘I don't know if he was on the branch when my husband put it together or what.

Unwelcome: Mrs Baine, left, said she thought the corn snake was fake at first

'I just can't imagine my husband putting it together, touching every branch, without noticing it.’



The finding is reminiscent of 1989 film National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, where the accident-prone Griswold family discovers a squirrel in their Christmas tree.

It comes after another family in Meridian, Idaho called the fire department after finding a snake in their recently-purchased tree.



Crickett Rudd, Horticulturist at the FarWest Landscape and Garden in Boise said ‘that sometimes on rare occasions little critters and animals can get inside the wrapped Christmas trees, during the delivery process to try to stay warm’.



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