DECATUR, Texas — Imagine this: You're sitting on the couch, watching the Dallas Mavericks play against the Utah Jazz in the NBA Playoffs and you leave your spot for 10 minutes to eat some some pizza.
When you come back, there's a coiled-up rattlesnake on the very couch you were just sitting on.
And it's not just staring back at you. It's rattling, too.
Jacob Gamble of Decatur, Texas, knows this experience firsthand. And he shared to social media the harrowing video that showed his encounter with a highly venomous snake, which claimed his family couch during Game 3 of the Mavericks-Jazz series last Thursday night.
Decatur is located northwest of Fort Worth.
"Do not get close to that thing!" Gamble's daughter can be heard saying to him in the video as the snake rattled its tail upon his approach. "Oh my God, dad! Stop!"
Gamble posted the video of the rattlesnake in a popular private North Texas Facebook group titled "What kind of snake is this? North Texas Educational Group" and it quickly went viral from there.
Wrote Gamble in his post: "Decatur, TX east of town off 380. We were sitting there 10 min earlier watching the Mavs and went inside to grab some pizza. When I came back out it politely warned me that that was it's spot now."
WFAA spoke with Gamble over the phone on Tuesday after he sent us the video. Gamble said he and his family have lived in Decatur for about three years -- and they have never had an experience like this.
Gamble said he was watching the game outdoors, sitting on the couch in his family's open back patio area, when his daughter came home at around 8:30 p.m. after picking up pizza from a local spot called Joe's Pizza & Pasta.
At that point, the Gamble family all went inside to eat. When they finished, Gamble said, they came back outside to the patio to find the rattle snake sitting in their place.
The humor isn't lost on Gamble that the snake appeared in front of a couch bearing the words "Live the life you imagined."
Alas, the snake's life ended shortly after the recording stopped, according to Gamble, who said he shot and killed the venomous rattlesnake before disposing of its body later in the night.