School principal knew the snake would probably bite — but she grabbed it anyway

School Principal Kara Rohr said she just happened to be leaving the office when she heard a teacher call about a snake in her classroom.

Rather than waiting for maintenance to check out the snake that was coiled in the corner of a Hector Elementary School classroom, Rohr told FOX16 in Arkansas that she went to the room to see whether she could help.

But she wasn’t going in inexperienced. Before becoming a principal, she worked at state parks in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Kentucky, the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported.

“I have a little bit of experience as a park ranger ... and I was kind of comfortable around snakes,” Rohr told FOX16.

Using her prior snake experience, she walked right up to the snake and said, “Oh yeah, it’s a tiny little fella,” second-grade teacher Lisa Graves told the station. “She said, ‘I’m going to pick him up,’ and I was like, ‘Are you crazy? ... No.”

Despite Graves’ concern, the principal was determined to remove the snake from school.

She got closer to the snake, and she saw that it was a baby speckled kingsnake, Rohr told the station.

Speckled kingsnakes are not venomous, according to the Missouri Department of Conservation.

However, “When captured, they may try to bite,” the department said.

And Rohr knew that going in.

“From the way it was curled up, I knew it was probably going to latch on,” she told the Democrat-Gazette, “but it’s a pretty harmless snake.”

She told FOX 16 she remembered telling Graves that “it’s not really going to hurt that bad” if it does bite.

So she went for it, and she was right — this snake was going to bite.

“Sure enough, I didn’t get it close enough to its head, and it flipped around and latched on to my thumb,” Rohr told FOX16. She also told the second-grade teacher that the snake sure had “sharp little teeth for a little fella,” Graves said.

After the snake bit her, Graves placed the snake in a bag and showed it to her students, according to the Democrat-Gazette.

Speckled kingsnakes usually calm down quickly after they are captured, the Missouri Department of Conservation said, and they can be easily handled.

“The students saw the snake and really liked that,” she told the Democrat-Gazette. “They thought it was pretty cool.”

The snake was then released away from the school, the newspaper reported.

Last week a teacher killed a snake that was outside of a first-grade classroom in West Virginia, WSAZ reported. And earlier this year, in Florida, a teen was bitten by a venomous coral snake at school, NBC reported.

This story was originally published August 28, 2018 at 11:26 AM with the headline "School principal knew the snake would probably bite — but she grabbed it anyway."