Skip to content

Snake! Snake! Pt 2

I wrote a while back there are some things so mental in so-called “real life” you couldn’t possibly put it in a script – and plenty of you left similarly bonkers tales in the comments section.

So, here’s another one. The lad and I were walking home from school yesterday afternoon on our usual route – and my boy FOUND A LIVE SNAKE IN A HEDGE.

It was quite long – perhaps 25cm – but very skinny; it was bright red and speckly and clearly not even vaguely indigenous to the UK, so natch I was a little concerned it was poisonous (though some Googling later I realise it was an albino corn snake, like the one in the pic). What it was doing in a hedge was unclear: from the angle, it appears as if some *lovely* (not) soul had thrown it from a car, undoubtedly an unwanted pet. I attempted to call the RSPCA but of course I had no credit on my phone. Tried to put credit on the phone and it told me my card was declined – even though I had used it literally five minutes before. Perhaps in the panic I had put the wrong numbers in. Whatever: THERE’S A SNAKE IN THE HEDGE!!!!

Anyway, my boy is a lot calmer than me and says, “Go and get someone from the garage, Mum” as if I’M the kid. I go and do what he says and ask the bloke there if he can call the RSPCA. He doesn’t believe there’s a snake in the hedge, so wants to come and see it. He swiftly goes to get his gloves: “What are you doing??” I shriek, “It could be poisonous!”

He says, “It’s alright, if it bites me I ain’t got nothing else on tonight.”

So he gets big car mechanic type gloves and picks it up. “What is it, do you think?” I say, meaning the breed of snake.

“Well I’d definitely say it’s a snake.” He says gravely.

Share this:

9 thoughts on “Snake! Snake! Pt 2”

  1. Only you could find a snake in a bush like that.

    The poor thing. I hope the RSPCA came for it.

    I’ve only ever seen a snake in Australia – definitely poisonous, though I didn’t realise and took loads of close up shots until the guide came running over in a panic. Oh well.

  2. You do that Drac – was the pic not enuff?! ; )

    Laura – actually I woulda walked straight past it, my lad thought it was a toy or something, says: “Oh, look at this” starts reaching for it, I shriek– “STOP RIGHT THERE!” ‘cos I saw its little tongue flickering. It’s not the first exotic creature he’s found either – when he was about 6 he comes running into the house yelling “THERE’S A LOBSTER IN THE GARDEN! COME AND SEE!” I say, “sure” cos by this point there had been wolves and dinosaurs and all sorts in the garden —

    –And there was a lobster in our garden! A live one! Even though we lived inland nowhere near a river at the time!!!!

    I called the RSPCA who came to fetch it — turns out it was a freshwater crayfish. But how it got into our garden when we were nowhere near a water source still remains a mystery to this day. I think a bird must have dropped it, but it musta been a big bloody bird cos this thing was BIG.

  3. Ha ha ha! It sounds like you have quite a lot of excellent comedic material in your life – you should definitely draft it into a bit of screenwriting at some point… In fact, Robin Kelly has just been talking about writing for comedy, and how we are likely to reproduce what we know for the first few years of writing comedy (i.e. comedy we have already seen on television)… But producing what we have already experienced in life… Now that is original… Difficult to do, but original…

  4. UPDATE ON SNAKE: popped into garage on the skool run today, bloke there says he took it to an animal refuge. Apparently it was in the nick of time since the snake was v cold and since he’s from California he coulda died. Blimey! But all’s well that ends well…

  5. Yes, they like higher temperatures – that’s why you’re more likely to see Snakes On A Plain.
    I’m sorry, I’ll leave now.
    J

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *