Choked up: Indiana boaters find snake with ‘huge’ fish stuck in mouth

BROOKVILLE, Ind. — Snakes are not unusual in lakes. But a dead snake with a large fish stuck in its mouth is certainly rare.

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“I’m never swimming in the lake again,” Amber Conley wrote in a Facebook post on Sunday.

Conley and her friend, Brad Walton, found the dead reptile while boating on Brookville Lake in Union County, Indiana, WCPO-TV reported.


The couple found the dead, 4 1/2-foot snake while fueling their boat, according to WXIX-TV.

“If we could have stretched it out, it would have been almost as tall as me and I’m 5-foot-2,” Conley told WCPO.

Conley believes the fish’s sharp fins were caught in the reptile’s mouth, preventing the snake from swallowing its prey.

“The gas attendant ladies were freaking out, so we took a couple (of) pictures and tossed it,” Conley told WANE-TV.

Initially, Conley and Walton thought the snake was a long piece of floating driftwood, WCPO reported. Upon closer inspection, they realized it was not wood after all.

“He leaned over and said ‘it’s a snake eating a huge fish!’” Conley told the television station. “We didn’t believe him so he grabbed the buoy hook and scooped it out.

“It was dead and stiff and smelled awful!”

Conley joked in her Facebook post that their boat “Shore Thing” is now for sale, but added that she is used to snakes in the water.

“My property abuts up to the river that feeds the lake, and I see (snakes) a lot in my back yard,” Conley told WXIX. “I’ve just never saw one with a massive fish caught in its throat and clearly choked from it, or one that long.

Angela Hatke, the Digital Engagement and Publicity Manager at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, said the zoo’s reptile team believed the reptile was most likely a Northern water snake. Conley, meanwhile, said she was surprised at the response to her photo.

“I never dreamed (the photo) would go viral, and people were saying it was photoshopped and not in Indiana,” Conley told WCPO. “I uploaded the pic with the exact coordinates where it was taken.”

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