Like most teenage girls, Hannah Brierley spends a lot of time in the bathroom. But on one fine morning when the 16-year-old wandered into the bathroom to fix her hair and apply her makeup, she opened the door and the stuff of nightmares slithered out.
For curled up on top of the bathroom’s radiator was a monstrous albino snake, waiting patiently, like a vicious predator preparing for its next meal of mammal meat.
The fact that there was an actual six-foot serpent sitting in the bathroom, which had appeared out of nowhere, as if it had just slithered out of the Garden of Eden, didn’t at first register with Hannah.
The Daily Mail reports that the teenager from Rochdale, Manchester, thought her mischievous mother was merely playing a prank on her and stared in rapt wonder and impressed awe for a few minutes at the detailed intricacy of her mom’s fake snake.
Then the six foot long northern pine snake moved, and Hannah’s world fell apart.
Hearing her daughter screaming like a wounded banshee, 40-year-old mon Karen Marriot came storming up the stairs. Laying eyes on the source of her daughter’s terror and reeling with the realization that there was a snake in her bathroom, Mrs. Marriot did what most people do when confronted with a home invasion by a repulsive reptile: she called the cops.
Mrs. Marriot reveals that not only was the snake terrorizing her family in their own home, its very presence was also preventing them from using the toilet.
“Hannah was calm at first. She can’t even deal with spiders, but I don’t think she thought it was real. She’d been looking at it for a few minutes until it moved. She thought I was having a joke.
“I felt like a wally dialling 999 but I didn’t know what to do. I’m frightened because I don’t know how it got in. It was like something out of a film. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Everybody needed a wee, but we couldn’t go.”
Before you could say, “That reptile would make a nice pair of boots,” Detective Constable Wallace of Rochdale police station appeared on the scene and took the snake in hand.
The experienced snake handler used a pillowcase to capture the albino giant and explained his fearless actions were as a result of handling many snakes in the past.
“I keep snakes so I know a lot about them. It was a northern pine snake. They can give a nasty bite, but they’re not venomous. ‘If it did bite you, you would struggle to get it off. I put my hand through a pillow slip then got the back of it’s head and wrapped it up.”
The snake was later transferred to the care of the RSPCA, but this slithering saga doesn’t end there. After seeing pictures of the snake on Facebook, 23-year-old Bradley Heywood realized the saucy serpent was none other than his very own runaway reptile, Rob.
Bradley explained to the Mirror that Rob had been “hissing” in action for seven months, and he thought he had lost the snake for good, leaving his family and him “heartbroken.”
But upon discovering Rob had been found two miles down the road, Bradley was barking with joy and has since been reunited with Rob the reptile.
“When I saw the pictures on Facebook there was no mistaking it was Rob.I feel sorry for the girl that found him but all he would do is hiss a little bit.”
[Images Via Wikimedia Commons / The Daily Mail/ The Mirror ]