Peeping tom stared at Charlotte homeowner through a window. Neither one blinked.
A Charlotte homeowner stared down a peeping tom that was eyeballing him through his kitchen window Sunday morning.
“It was just so weird,” Wayne Ewart told The Charlotte Observer.
Ewart was putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher around 9 a.m. when he saw “the eyes staring at me.”
He thought the visitor was a lizard at first — the reptilian, not creepy human variety — or a lizard-like salamander.
“It was literally moving all over the window trying to get the best look,” he said. “But by the time I got my phone to video, it practically froze. It knew I was watching.”
“I am deathly afraid of snakes,” Ewart said, but the one in his window was a common, non-venomous baby rat or black snake, 26 inches long.
Because the snake was tiny, Ewart said, he wasn’t afraid or startled, just curious why it was there. On Friday, he said he was still stumped by its appearance.
Wildlife in his yard: baby raccoons, owl, deer
Ewart lives off Park Road in south Charlotte, bordering Little Sugar Creek Greenway. He’s a retired Realtor who grew up on his family’s Huntersville dairy farm, where the only wildlife he saw was a possum.
Now, he said, baby raccoons enjoy visiting his three indoor-only cats, including big orange tabby Little Boy, greeting them at windows.
Deer roam the woods outside his home, and an owl appeared about 10 days before the snake.
“I hope he’s stalking a juvenile rat snake and not this season’s raccoon babies for his next meal,” Ewart said Friday.
In Ewart’s video, the snake appears bigger and longer, until Ewart taps the window with his finger, giving the image perspective. The snake continued staring at him.
Ewart went outside and touched the snake with a broom handle.
“He just jumped and started moving around” this way and that, Ewart said.
The snake vanished through a crack in the deck, he said.
Ewart looked around, thinking the snake most definitely had a momma and, possibly, brothers and sisters around.
As of Friday, he saw no sign of the snake or its family and said if he does, he’ll just leave them be. Such snakes benefit the environment, he said.
“I just don’t want to run into them,” he said.