Help, Mum! There’s a 6ft ssstranger in the bathroom
THE fugitive 6ft albino snake must have thought Hannah Marriott’s bathroom radiator was simply a lovely warm place to curl up for a nap.
But unfortunately for the uninvited reptile, 16-year- old Hannah didn’t see it that way.
The terrified teenager nearly jumped out of her skin when she found the dozing snake draped over a bathmat on the radiator.
However, expert help was at hand in the form of amateur snake expert Detective Constable Craig Wallace, who responded to her mother’s 999 call.
The real-life pet detective overheard Karen Marriott’s plea for help in the control room at Rochdale police station and volunteered to trap the escapee.
After racing round to the family’s home in nearby Littleborough, he managed to capture it in a pillow case before taking his wriggling prisoner back to the station where it was placed in the care of the RSPCA.
The reptile, white all over with black eyes, is believed to be a northern pine snake – and Detective Constable Wallace believes it may be an escaped family pet which slithered into the house during recent warm weather.
Mrs Marriott, 40, said she was forced to call the police for help at 7am on Monday after failing to get hold of the RSPCA.
She added: ‘Hannah can’t even deal with spiders, but I don’t think she thought it was real. She’d been looking at it for a few minutes until it moved.
‘She thought I was having a joke. I felt a wally dialling 999, but I didn’t know what to do.
‘I’m frightened because I don’t know how it got in. It was like something out of a film. Everybody needed a wee, but we couldn’t go.’
Detective Constable Wallace said: ‘I keep snakes so I know a lot about them. It can give a nasty bite, but they’re not venomous. If it did bite you, you would struggle to get it off. I put my hand through a pillow slip then got the back of it’s head and wrapped it up. I wanted to keep it as a station pet, but no one would sit near me!’
Northern pine snakes are native to the US, where they feed on small mammals, lizards and birds and can grow to 7ft.
‘Like something out of a film’