As a Floridian, I do find those posts humorous...I know people have phobias, and I've got things I dislike too...but animals and bugs and and around your house/hotel/etc is one that most Floridians have long since learned to cope with. So when out-of-towners come down here and go through shock-and-awe for a gecko on the wall, or a bufo toad standing on the front porch as they step outside...I chuckle.
I've grown up with anole lizards, geckos, bufo toads, tree frogs, snakes of all varieties, mice, rats, squirrels, every kind of bird, possum, armadillos, raccoons, 6-foot iguanas, alligators, deer, fox, and a nearly-unimaginable variety of insects from pinhead-size to Buick-size...both IN and AROUND my house. Many I've handled, chased, or fed.
On nearly any given day, there are 2 geckos somewhere in my house - if I'm lucky enough to find them and catch them, I release them outside...otherwise I discover their dried-up corpse on a window sill. My pool usually has a regular singles-club meeting of huge bufo toads lining the rim at night, croaking out conversations and trying to attract a mate. Raccoons are always knocking over the trash cans to get at the goodies inside - more than a few times I've walked up to a can to drop trash in and been confronted with a masked face staring back at me from a foot away. I've been tailwhipped by 6-foot green iguanas who I had to chase away from my hedges that they like to chew on in my backyard. And I've had fish stolen from the end of a line at the lake across the street by hungry gators that shouldn't be in there (they sneak into community lakes via the sewers).
Having said all that - I'm not making fun of people who don't want to find a snake in their room - it isn't exactly an option I'd intentionally check on my checkin sheet either. But my approach to it would be more typically Floridian - I'd see the snake, corner and grab it, chastise it verbally for being inside my room, and escort it to a nearby hedge.
