We have all heard of the term “trouser snake”, but this is a REAL case of someone having a bad case of the trouser snake blues.
When Mark Saunders of Southbourne (outside Bournemouth on the South Coast of England) went out late one evening to get a packet of cigarettes, he had an unpleasant surprise.
While walking along, he noticed a tightening sensation on his ankle, but didn’t think any more of it.
A short time later, he passed a group of people who had been out partying for the evening, and he overheard one of them say “That guy’s got a snake wrapped around his ankle”.
Mark begged with them to help him pull the snake off, which they did, one man pinning the snake to the ground, while mark called for his nephew to help him put it in a pillowcase.
The party-goers enjoyed the whole thing, and captured it on their mobile phones.
Having got the snake home, Mark put it into a secure tub with air holes, and the next day set about trying to find out where it came from.
The local reptile store, Reptiles Plus said that they were not missing any snakes, and so the origin of the phantom ankle grabber remains a mystery.
Fortunately it seems that it was a corn snake, which is harmless.
Mark is an animal lover, but has had a bad history with snakes.
Last year he was bitten two times by a Honduras milk snake, that had found it’s way into a neighbour’s flat, and some years ago he had been bitten by an adder, the UK’s only venomous snake, and ended up in hospital.
Certainly with two snakes that are foreign to the UK being found in a small area in a year, it’s a cause of concern. Let us hope that the area doesn’t get infested with pythons like the Florida Everglades.
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(Image from Flickr used under a Collective Commons License)
