Lisa Scottoline: Please Put The Lid Down

Lately, everyone is hating on fake news.

I'm hating on news I wish were fake.

Of course, I'm talking about the snake in the toilet.

I read the story on Facebook, source of all reliable news.

I believe everything I read on Facebook, and so should you.

According to Facebook, everyone's marriage is perfect, everyone's children are brilliant, and everyone's vacation is better than yours.

Facebook people live a different life from the rest of us. Their cats are affectionate, their dogs don't poop on the floor, and their meals are photogenic.

They don't eat anything that comes out of a can.

Me? I'm the opposite.

If it doesn't come out of a can, I'm not having it for lunch.

Namely, Amy's soups. Try the Southwestern Chipotle and the Mixed Vegetable.

I change it up for dinner by eating things that come out of jars.

If it doesn't come out of the jar, I cannot be bothered. Rao's spaghetti sauce comes out of a jar, and I can't be the only Italian American who uses tomato sauce out of a jar.

It's not my secret shame, it's my secret sauce, and who has time to stand in front of a pot all day?

Anyway, to stay on point, it was on Facebook that I read the story of a boy from Texas who woke up in the morning, went to the bathroom, and found a rattlesnake inside his toilet.

I didn't believe it, but there was a picture of a snake coming out of a toilet.

I'm not going to show you because you will never be able to unsee it.

I still think of pictures as proof positive that something happened, even though nowadays people Photoshop their pictures to look thinner and/or to add or subtract a person.

Like an ex-husband.

I would never Photoshop Thing One or Thing Two out of a picture. Instead, I would rip the picture in half, tear the half into pieces, burn the pieces to ashes, jump up and down on the ashes, then sweep the ashes off a cliff.

Which would be so much more satisfying.

But still, the Facebook photo did not look doctored to me at all. On the contrary, it looked exactly like what it purported to be, which was a snake coming out of a toilet.

The story was especially horrifying to me because I'm easy to horrify. I estimate I spend half of my time walking around in horror. I'm horrified by politics, world events, and people who are mean to animals.

Animals never horrify me, except when they come out of toilets.

The other reason this is especially horrifying to me is because, as you may recall, I have a garden populated with snakes. I didn't know this until I found a giant ball of snakes rolling around my front yard, which I later found out was a snake mating ball. And the only thing more horrifying than snakes coming out of your toilet is snakes having sex in your front yard.

To return to the point, I went online to verify the snake-in-a-toilet story, and you know what?

The reports agreed that it was possible for a snake to get inside your toilet, but it was unlikely.

Unlikely is not good enough for me.

I need to hear zero possibility.

But nobody is saying that.

On the contrary, National Geographic on Twitter stated, "The chances of finding a snake in your toilet are extremely low, but unfortunately not zero."

Now, this is where I reveal that I go to the bathroom to pee approximately 35 times a day.

Seventeen of those are at night.

Women pee constantly, and we all know it. That's why the line to the ladies' room is always disproportionately long at any public event, and why some completely frustrated women will get sick of waiting and use the men's room.

(That's me. I'm that woman. No man is ever in there. It's just me, needing to pee. And until the bathroom police come after me, I'm not stopping.)

Anyway, for the last two weeks when I go to the bathroom at night, I cannot bring myself to sit down without checking to see if there is a snake in my toilet. I have to turn on the light, but this wakes me up, so when I go back to bed, I'm nervous and ultimately sleepless.

With no one to blame it on.

Surely not myself.

Maybe Facebook.

Or snakes.

They've been our frenemy ever since they offered Eve the apple.

Look for Lisa and Francesca's humor collection "I've Got Sand in All the Wrong Places" and Lisa's novel "Damaged" in stores now. Also look for Lisa's new domestic thriller, "One Perfect Lie," coming in April.