Picture the scene: you’re chilling at home, minding your own business, maybe you’re even watching a film or two on Netflix.
Basically, it’s a pretty uneventful night. That is, until you wander into your bathroom and get the fright of your life when you see an 8ft boa constrictor staring at you.
It all sounds pretty unbelievable, right? Wrong, because that’s exactly what one woman in The Wirral, Merseyside, experienced recently when she entered her bathroom.
Merseyside Police rushed to the flat after the horrified resident – who does not own a snake – found the boa curled up between her bath and sink.
A police spokesperson said officers were left ‘flabbergasted’ after they were called to the first floor flat in Birkenhead to reports of a snake in the bathroom.
When they arrived, they found themselves confronted by a 6-8ft boa constrictor that had wrapped itself around the bathroom fittings.
Police said neither the woman or her neighbours knew where the snake had come from, although the boa was not thought to be poisonous.
When efforts to enlist snake experts failed, rather than attempting to coax the snake out by themselves police called upon Constable Chris Eastwood from the Matrix Team, whose officers are specifically trained to deal with a variety of disorder situations.
A spokesperson said Constable Eastwood, who has knowledge of snakes and handling them, confirmed it was a boa constrictor when he arrived at the scene. From there he was able to calmly approach the reptile, which had wrapped itself around the bathroom sinks and taps.
The officer then gave the snake a drink of water before coaxing it to unravel itself so he could put it into a large, safe container. Constable Eastwood then made arrangements to have the snake temporarily housed at a local pet rescue facility.
The Merseyside Police spokesperson joked: ‘The snake has been temporarily rehomed and is doing well. The rest is hiss-tory.’
The boa constrictor is a member of the family Boidae and is significantly smaller than its anaconda cousin. Although smaller, boas can still grow up to 13ft long and weigh more than 100 pounds.
They are typically found in tropical Central and South America and prefer to stay on dry land, living primarily in hollow logs and abandoned mammal burrows.
God knows how it ended up in a random bathroom in The Wirral, then.
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A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).