A Nightmare

A woman from Troy, NY was visiting her parents in Long Island when she had the horrifying experience of finding her 7 month old daughter sharing her nap with a constricting snake.

A mother in Brentwood checked on her sleeping daughter to find a real-life
urban legend come true: There was a snake in her baby's crib, she said.
Cari Abatemarco, 32, of upstate Troy, was visiting family in Brentwood late last week when she awoke after 1 a.m. Thursday to the sound of her 7-month-old daughter's cries and responded as any mother would. She said she found a live snake coiled around baby Isabella's leg.

"Once I lifted her up and the snake fell off of her, she stopped crying. But then I was the one crying all night," Abatemarco said.
Abatemarco's uncle Charlie Vecchiarelli eventually pried the hissing
snake from Isabella's crib with a back-scratcher and placed it in a bucket,
according to Joyce Abatemarco, the baby's grandmother. Animal control officers
said they picked it up later Thursday and brought it to the Town of Islip animal
shelter in Bay Shore.

Though no one in the home can imagine how the snake got there, there are a few theories.

(1) The grandparents had recently bought the crib for the visit from a local vendor and they remember the box being slightly opened. They hypothesize that the snake may have been living in the mattress.

(2) Animal control officers surmise that, given the horrible heat that has been suffocating the East Coast, everyone (including snakes and other unwelcome visitors) is looking for shade.

OR

(3) Having successfully escaped from the local zoo, the wayward snake found himself longing for the confines of a barred habitat.