When Paul Carver saw what looked like a baby king snake crawling around in the backyard of his Clarksville, TN, home, he did a slight double take.
But he was twice as shocked when he saw it had two heads.
"I was like, 'What do I do with this thing?' I was worried about which head was going to bite me," Carver told WSMV.com.
So Carver took the double-domed reptile to Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) officer Dale Grandstaff, who was also surprised by the snake, which has two separate heads with two functioning brains, yet they share the same eight inch body, according to KPHO.com
"I've been doing this for 13 years and been in the woods my whole life, you know nearly 40 years, and I've never seen anything like this," Grandstaff said. "Both tongues work. It has a set of eyes on each head and a mouth on each head."
Two heads aren't better than one in this case. Grandstaff says the snake's chances of survival in the wild aren't very good.
"With two heads everything's getting caught. See he's trying to push but he can't," Grandstaff told WSMV.com
Grandstaff will take the snake to Tennessee Tech in Cookevill, TN, on Thursday, to see if the hungry hydra can be fed and, er, hydrated.
If the snake doesn't eat and ends up dying, the scientists still plan to preserve the body to use in the classroom.
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PHOTOS: MORE TWO-HEADED ANIMALS