Taking the hiss!
When Pauline Breame, 71, from Swindon, decided to take a bath, she realised she wasn’t alone…
Being a retired woman of leisure, I had all the time in the world. On one particular afternoon, while my husband David, 69, was out tending to the garden, I decided to have a long relaxing soak in the tub.
‘I’m going for a bath!’ I called out to David.
I switched the water on and undressed, chucking my clothes on the bedroom floor.
This will soon sort out my aching back, I thought.
But, as I lifted my foot up, ready to sink into the hot bubbly water, I suddenly saw something flicker out the corner of my eye.
It was a flash of orange whizzing across the bathroom floor. Then I saw the scales… Screaming in terror, I bolted out of the bathroom as fast as I could. ‘Snake! There’s a snake!’ I cried. I dashed out onto the landing just as David came running in.
It must have been quite a sight for him – me standing at the top of the stairs in the buff! ‘What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘There’s a snake in the bathroom!’ I shouted.
I was shaking by then, so David rushed up, wrapped me in a towel and sat me down in the bedroom.
‘Now let’s see what we’re dealing with,’ he said, making his way into the bathroom. My hero! But there was bad news. ‘He’s crawled up through a gap in the bath panel,’ David said. ‘I can’t get at it.’ Our intruder had slithered away! But I couldn’t just leave it at that. The snake was still somewhere in our house! Snakes make me feel sick even when I see them on TV, and for all I knew, it could have been poisonous.
‘We’ll have to call the RSPCA,’ I said.
Soon enough, they were on their way.
Then I called my daughter Samantha, 45, who came over straight away with my granddaughter Miah, five.
‘Can I see the snake?’ Miah asked excitedly.
She’d always loved creepycrawlies – not like her nan!
‘Grandma’s just pulling our leg,’ Samantha said.
But when a man from the RSPCA arrived carrying a bag and a hook, Samantha knew I wasn’t telling fibs.
After scoping out the bathroom, we realised that the floorboards extended into our bedroom, and that my beloved five-door wardrobe, which was attached to the wall, would need to be dismantled. Workmen had to be called and I cringed as they got busy tearing through my wardrobe’s pristine white floor. ‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ said the RSPCA man. ‘The snake has just gone into a wall cavity, just above your kitchen. We’ll need to make a hole through the outside brick wall with a drill.’ ‘My house is being destroyed because of this snake!’ I cried. By then, a group of
neighbours had gathered outside, wondering what all the commotion was about. But suddenly… ‘We’ve ‘We’ve caught caught him!’ him!’ the the RSPCA man cried, waving the snake in a cotton bag.
‘The sound of the drill scared him, so he slid back beneath the bath hole and we grabbed him.’ Relief! ‘I don’t want to see it!’ I cried, as the man came near me with the bag.
It turns out it was a corn snake – not poisonous – and was probably someone’s pet that had escaped.
Officers are trying to track down its owner, and the workmen have repaired the damage.
Now that the snake is gone, gone I’ve calmed down a bit.
I wouldn’t have been able to sleep if they hadn’t found it! Now I think I’ll look twice the next time I go in for a bath!
Our intruder had escaped