Scots gran finds python in suitcase after trip Down Under

A STOWAWAY snake flew almost 12,000 miles from Australia to Scotland in a gran’s suitcase. Moira Boxall found the reptile curled up in her shoe as she unpacked after her trip. She said: “I took a shoe out and I thought it was a small piece of bubble BY KEITH McLEOD wrap – but the snake had actually shed its skin.

“Then I saw it wriggling out with its fangs showing. I was in an awful state of shock.”

The snake had travelled in Moira’s case from Mackay in Queesnsland to her home in Bridge of Allan, near Stirling, via stopovers in Brisbane and Dubai.

Moira, 72, managed to get the nonvenomous python into a box, which she took outside.

She then rang her daughter, who called the Scottish SPCA. The pensioner added: “A lady came round and used a pillowcase to removed it safely.”

The snake hitched a lift while Moira was visiting her daughter Sarah and husband Paul Airlie in Mackay.

She believes she had spotted the python in their house three weeks earlier.

Retired building society worker Moira said: “I was woken up in the middle of the night with a crash in my bedroom. I saw a snake by a skirting board. It had knocked a plant pot over.”

Moira left the room to alert her daughter and son-in-law, but when she went back, the python was nowhere to be seen.

She said: “I had a snake catcher in the next morning but they found nothing.”

Moira is amazed the python survived on her own version of the film Snakes on a Plane.

She added: “I had been travelling for about 48 hours. It was in my suitcase all that time in the hold – it must have been very cold.”

Scottish SPCA animal rescue officer Taylor Johnstone said: “The snake is in quarantine at our animal rescue and rehoming centre in Edinburgh.”