Mother’s terror as 5ft rat snake slithers past kitchen window
LISA Pell is so nervous of snakes she won’t even enter the reptile house at a zoo.
So when the 49-year-old mother of three came face to face with a 5ft Taiwanese beauty rat snake dangling outside her kitchen window, she was horrified.
She had just finished work when she noticed the exotic constrictor sunning itself on the covered patio in her garden.
Mrs Pell, who runs a T-shirt printing business, said: ‘I’ve never even seen a grass snake before so to spot this outside my kitchen window was terrifying.
‘I’ve no idea where it came from. We live in a small village and our garden is surrounded on all sides, so I don’t know how it got in.’
Beauty rat snakes, which typically feed on rodents, are often kept as pets but can be dangerous in the wild even though they are not venomous.
Soon after Mrs Pell spotted the reptile, it slithered off and hid behind some wood in the garden at the family’s home in Flixborough, near Scunthorpe.
Concerned for the safety of their two chihuahuas, she tried to contact the RSPCA but was unable to get through.
Instead, she phoned the local vets who said that if a member of the family could catch the snake, they would take it in.
Mrs Pell’s son Scott, 24, who made the first attempt, said: ‘I’m a nature person and thought I’d be able to get hold of it easily, but as I went to pick it up it hissed at me and jumped up as if it wanted to bite me. I backed away as fast as I could – it was scary.’
Mrs Pell’s husband Richard, 48, eventually caught the snake when he got home from work, donning a pair of gardening gloves to grab and restrain it.
The family took it to the Old Registry Vets in Scunthorpe, where the ‘very agitated’ reptile was identified as a Taiwanese beauty rat snake. A spokesman said: ‘A friend of one of the vets agreed to temporarily foster it. We’ve no idea where it’s from and nobody has claimed it.’