It’s not unusual for Roxanne Flanagan and her family to be at Ocean City. They have two houses in nearby Ocean Pines, and try to travel to the shore several times a year.

The family’s trip this weekend, though, took a highly unusual — and now semi-viral — turn.

Walking to the ocean to dip their toes in the water on Saturday, two of Flanagan’s children encountered a large black snake. One of her children, a 7-year-old girl, started shouting.

Flanagan at first thought it was a stick, but then saw it moving. She told the kids to get back and give the animal space.

“It was slithering probably for a few good minutes,” Flanagan said. She described the snake as moving along the sand and being pushed bythe waves.

Videos that Flanagan shared show the snake moving up and down the sand and attempting to enter the water. As the snake slithers back and forth, it sometimes lifts up its head and back.

Local animal control officers came to the beach to relocate the snake, reported WMAR. A spokesperson for Worcester County did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Gregg Bortz, a spokesperson for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, said the animal appears to be an eastern hognose snake.

“This is a native species that likes habitats with sandy soil, so it would not be unusual for it to be found on the beach,” Bortz said in an email.

The eastern hognose is native to the U.S., with a range that stretches from the Great Lakes to Maine and all the way south to Florida, according to The Maryland Zoo.

They’re solitary and active during the day. They mate in late spring and females lay their eggs in the summer.

Dan Dembiec, the vice president of animal care operations at the National Aquarium, said that while it’s not unheard of to see an eastern hognose on the beach, it is “a little bit weird” to encounter a snake out in the open on the coast.

Maryland is “designed perfectly” for the eastern hognose, Dembiec said, because they like to live at the edges of forests with access to water.

For anyone who encounters a wild animal — including snakes — the message is always the same, Dembiec said.

“Let them be,” he said.

That’s especially the case with hognose snakes, which are not dangerous to people, Dembiec said. You don’t have to freak out, and can instead just hang back and enjoy observing nature.

“The best advice always with snakes is, step back and watch them,” Dembiec said. “They won’t attack you. They don’t eat people.”

Flanagan doesn’t know exactly where on the beach they were, but she said it was near the fishing pier, just north of the Ocean City Inlet.

Flanagan said part of the reason she stuck around after seeing the snake was because there were other people enjoying the beach, and she wanted to make sure to keep an eye on the reptile so it didn’t surprise anyone.

And though she may not be the biggest fan of getting into the opaque water at Ocean City, Flanagan isn’t going to stop going to the beach anytime soon.

She wants her kids to enjoy their summer and not be scared of the ocean.

“I’ll still go to the beach, but I’ll be extra cautious,” she said.