A grandmother has described her horror after she found a snake in her kitchen while going to get water from the tap.
Lorraine Jones, from Brecon, found the snake sliding around on her window sill on Sunday night, August 15.
The 55-year-old, who was shocked to discover the snake, said: “It was not something I expected to find on a Sunday evening.
“I’d had the grandchildren over the night before, on the Saturday. On the Sunday, I went get water out of the tap and it was just slithering between the plants.
“I never shut the window normally, but I had that night and so there was no draft coming through which is why I think it was by there.
“I saw it and I just thought ‘that’s a snake’.”
Lorraine, who found the corn snake at her home in Cradoc Close, attempted to contact one of her sons but she couldn’t get through.
Leaving the serpent in the kitchen, she then contacted her daughter Hannah Jones.
Lorraine said: “She asked me ‘what are you on about? Are you sure it’s not just a worm’, so I went to take a picture of it so I could send it to her.
“When I went back, I couldn’t find it. I turned the light off and left again, and when I went back after ten minutes, there it was - lying on the paint brush.
“Not one of my brave sons would come and help me.”
One of Hannah’s friends came with her to the house to help assist Lorraine to contain the snake.
With a vacant fish tank, which Lorraine had cleaned earlier in the day following the death of her fish, they decided to attempt to trap the corn snake.
However, the snake had once again disappeared from plain sight.
The group went looking for the snake when it was pointed out that the reptiles need heat to survive meaning it would probably be near the boiler.
Lorraine said: “I have a cook book stand full of books near the boiler and I thought ‘it’ll probably be behind those’.
“We moved one of the books and there it was. I screamed - I was gone.
“We tried to put the tank on top of it but it was too long so we used the paintbrush to flick its tail under the tank.”
Lorraine said she struggled to sleep that night knowing there was a snake in the house.
She said she had to keep going to check to make sure he couldn’t get out - they had weighed down the top of the tank with a heavy jar but there was still a small gap at the top.
Another of Hannah’s friends, called Colin, offered to come to collect the snake once he was back in Brecon.
Lorraine said: “He said ‘when I come back, I’ll come and get him’ and he told me that he’d had reptiles before and he still had the equipment like the tank and heater
“The snake was going mental in the fish tank - it kept hissing. I can see the funny side of what happened now, but it was really wasn’t funny at the time.”
When Colin arrived at Lorraine’s house on Sunday he safely moved the snake into a pillow case so he could transport it to his home.
Lorraine said: “It was only a year old - in my head it seemed huge. The man who came to get it, he told me that in another year it would have been about five or six feet long.
“It was quite long, it was a good half width of the window sill and I have bigger windows than most people. It was a thin one to be fair, but really long.
“When it was in the pillow case, it went mental because it was scared. It filled the pillow case from the bottom to the top and I could see it wriggling.
“When he said he would take it, I was like ‘there you go then Dr Doolittle’, and I said that this B&B is now closed.”
Daughter Hannah took to social media to attempt to find the owners of the snake.
On Monday, the snake returned to its rightful owners - it had been missing from another house in Cradoc Close for around four weeks.
The owner collected the corn snake from Colin at around 10pm the following Monday, August 16.
Lorraine said: “Snakes are okay when they’re behind glass, but not seeing one in my own kitchen. I can see the funny side of it now, but I really didn’t find it funny at the time.
“I’d had the grandchildren over the night before and they are fearless. If they see anything they will pick it up to show me. I know if they’d seen that they would have picked it up.
“Spiders, worms and other bugs - they always show me. I don’t like anything like that. I really don’t like worms.
“I know it’s not venomous and that it’s meant to be non-aggressive, but I think that would have been it if I’d seen one of them holding a snake.”
The serpent - named Severus - is around one-years-old and it is thought he could have been in Lorraine’s house for a week or so.
The grandma said she had suspected something was wrong due to how cats were acting around her garden and outside of her home - she now puts this down to Severus’s presence.
Lorraine said: “Four weeks missing - he could have been in my house for about a week.
“The weird thing is, we were having terrible trouble with cats trying to get in the house.
“We’ve had no problems since he left - we’ve not seen a single cat near here.”
Lorraine wondered if one of the cats had brought the snake into the house and tried to return, or whether they could see it in the house.
She said: “I’ve had troubles with the cats - I had to keep closing the windows because they kept coming inside the house. All my plants kept being killed off because of them. My neighbour, who is a cat lover, noticed they were all in my garden and she said ‘I don’t know what’s going on here’”.
Corn snakes are one of the most popular species to be seen as pet snakes around the world, along with Ball Pythons, Green Snakes and Sand Boas.
A non-venomous North American species of rat snake, they don’t grow as large as other species and they are easy to manage meaning they are considered to be “beginner” pets for those who like to have reptilian companions.
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