You can’t make this up. From the Baton Rouge Advocate:

There are always jokes this time of year about all the unsavory characters coming through the State Capitol, as legislators and lobbyists come together to wrangle over what bills will eventually become law. But this year, those same people are sharing space with snakes — real snakes, presumably water snakes migrating from nearby Capitol Lake.

The exact number of snakes found in the building hasn’t been pinned down. The official word from the people who run the building’s operations is that there have been four or five confirmed snake sightings dating back to late April.

But a quick survey of the people who guard the doors or the people who clean the floors and take out the garbage, and the problem appears to be much more widespread. They estimate there have been more than a dozen snakes found in the building going back to early spring.

So far, it appears the snakes have left the Senate side of the building alone. On the House side, however, snakes have been found in a section of the building known as “Alario Hall” curled up in closets, slithering across the carpet in basement-level committee rooms and coiled up in the corner of a downstairs bathroom.

The issue of snakes inside the State Capitol hasn’t been well-publicized within the building. Some legislators said they’ve been briefed about the situation, while others were outright puzzled when asked about it.

A handful had to be convinced they were being questioned about actual reptiles and not their colleagues.

“We’re talking about real snakes; not the two-legged kind?” state Rep. Terry Landry, D-New Iberia, asked Thursday.

State Rep. Joe Harrison, R-Napoleonville, had a similar reaction.

“Are we talking about snakes that slither or the kind of snakes with last names,” he asked. “If we’re here working amongst snakes, I guess I need to find out if this is biblical or not.”