just a crawl space) and had burned up in the floor furnace when I turned it on.
dark, quiet, hidden; preferred by mice / snakes in the area.
When we were newlyweds, we rented a small house in a Walnut Orchard in Walnut Creek, CA. It’s very hot there, and you don’t need heat too often. The weather unexpectedly turned cold in the middle of spring, and I switched on the floor furnace. A horrid smell permeated the house. I could barely stand to be there, and I couldn’t get rid of it.
I called the landlord over (he lived in another house on the property) to check it out. A huge rattlesnake had crawled into the floor furnace (this house had no basement — just a crawl space) and had burned up in the floor furnace when I turned it on. I could hardly wait to move!
I once rented a place in the boonies of North Texas where I found dead snakes in the strangest places. The first one I ran across was - you guessed it - in the oven.
I guess it got in there during a cold winter, and someone turned the oven on one morning. No telling how long it had been there. I only found it because I had to do some repairs.