An Uninvited Guest

When I saw Jude suddenly fly backwards off his chair, yelling, I thought he'd simply been leaning back and the chair had slipped. In fact he'd felt a tickle on his leg, had rubbed it, then looked down to find this two metre long monster trying to climb inside his trousers!

I was surprised how quickly this thing could move, and how quickly everyone shot to the other side of the room!  It tried to get away up the back stairs, but found its way blocked by a door.  We then spent 30 minutes chasing it around the room, trying either to get it to go back down the stairs it must have come up, or capture it.  At one point Jude suggested pouring Kerosene on it!  Sanath was all for whacking it with a stick!  I was more for trying to catch it, which is what we eventually managed to do, only we couldn't get the lid on fast enough the first time.  Second time lucky, I got it into a bucket, got a top on it, and taped it down.  We then released it into a rough wooded area away from houses.

I had assumed it was venomous from the way the lads had reacted - shrieking, standing on chairs and on the table, and calling it a cobra.  They also said that hospitals had no treatment for bites.  I wanted to keep a safe distance so started off prodding and coaxing it with long pieces of plastic but had to resort to a short broom when it decided to hide in the small bathroom.  It had several goes at biting the broom and got quite aggressive.  Turns out it's a Rat Snake which is a constrictor, living off rodents and birds, and is actually not dangerous to humans.  I didn't know that at the time and was sweating and shaking, I can tell you! Not yer average daily occurrence I'm pleased to say!