Unless you're calling on Medusa in mythological Sarpedon, you probably won't expect an aggressive snake to answer you face-to-face the next time you ring a doorbell. But unfortunately for one poor man in North Carolina, that's exactly what happened when his "ding-dong" was met with a "hiss-hiss" and the scare of a lifetime. 

"And this is why I say everyone should have a doorbell camera," Paigeeeealexx captioned her video, which has accumulated 11.2 million views on TikTok. 

Although startling, the surprising slitherer appears to be a harmless rat snake; a common North American constrictor that mostly feasts on rodents. Growing up to six feet in length, the snake also has a special affinity for scaling small structures and scaring the heck out of people in the process. Similar videos of Ring doorbell rat snakes already exist, and as the Redditor phunktastic_1 commented on a photo of a rat snake on a wall, "If it's on the wall, where it shouldn't be at all, it's a rat snake." There is even a subreddit titled r/itsaratsnake dedicated to sharing photos, memes, and rhymes about the snake that goes where it's not supposed to.

Still, I think I'd rather talk to a human, or at least their cat, the next time I ring a doorbell. Especially when they have a doormat of a little red truck hauling a Christmas tree.