It was a peaceful Tuesday night on Walnut Grove Lane, and nearing Rachel's bedtime.

But soon, stuck between the tree and the wall, little Rachel was struck with a nightmare: She looked up from the electrical socket to find a snake just inches away from her nose.

"I screamed as loud as I could," she said. "He was gonna bite me."

Luckily for the Zebulon girl, the nonpoisonous snake didn't see her as dinner.

But, as Rachel's dad Tony Baine told her mom, the family had "an issue."

"He told me that there was a snake in the tree. And even when I saw (the snake), it was so still that I thought it was fake," Casey Baine said. "So I shook the tree a little bit and that's when he moved."

She describes the snake as being about 12-inches long, brown, and nonaggressive.

Yet despite the snake's "friendliness," Casey Baine immediately worried about her home's security.

Tony Baine had assembled the artificial tree prior to the family's Thanksgiving trip to California. The snake wasn't found until Tuesday.

"We keep the (artificial) tree in the garage. I don't know if he was on the branch when my husband put it together or what," Casey Baine said. "I just can't imagine my husband putting it together, touching every branch, without noticing it."

So Baine did what (she thinks) any person who found a snake in their tree would do: she whipped out her iPhone and started recording. "The video is precious. It shows (Tony) wrangling the snake out of the tree," she said. "I holler a few times, so you'll have to turn your volume down."

As for the snake, his new home is a jar which has been toted, as a lucky charm of sorts, to Tony's workplace in Durham.

"I don't want to keep it ... but I would love for my video to go viral," Casey Baine said. "I'm hoping the Today Show or one of those morning shows will see (the video) and invite us up there so we can spend Christmas in New York."