![\"Aesculapian](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/aesculapian-snake.png\")
<\/p>\nA 79-year-old man got the shock of his life earlier this week when he lifted the lid of his downstairs toilet and found a snake staring back at him.<\/p>\n
David Claridge, a Bracknell resident, spotted something yellow and black poking out of the bowl when he went to use the toilet on Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n
A closer look revealed the unwelcome visitor to be a grass snake, measuring approximately three feet (0.9 metres) in length.<\/p>\n
The Berkshire pensioner suspects the reptile had slithered up through the drainage system in search of water during the recent spell of hot weather.<\/p>\n
Mr Claridge described his astonishment at the discovery: “I thought I must be seeing things,” he said.<\/p>\n
“But I looked again, and for sure it was there. And then it moved.”<\/p>\n
Having identified the creature, he quickly determined it posed no danger.<\/p>\n
“I thought, well, it’s got to be a snake of some kind. What else could it be?” he recalled.<\/p>\n
The reptile is said to have slithered up through the drainage system in search of water during the recent spell of hot weather<\/p>\n
| LONDON ZOO<\/p>\n
After concluding the grass snake was non-venomous, Mr Claridge said he “felt no fear”.<\/p>\n
He did, however, opt to reach for a pair of barbecue tongs rather than handle the reptile with his bare hands, before setting about removing it from the property.<\/p>\n
Gripping the snake just below its head, Mr Claridge carried it out to his garden – though the creature initially attempted to head straight back towards the house.<\/p>\n
“I gave it a push and a nudge in the right direction and then it found the grass and was gone,” he said.<\/p>\n
As for how the reptile found its way indoors, the pensioner believes the answer lies in the plumbing.<\/p>\n
“I know this toilet and others discharge to a drain, and about a metre and a half away from there is a rainwater drain,” he explained.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t realise the two were connected, and that’s the only way I can imagine it must have come in.”<\/p>\n
The story took an unexpected twist when a nearby resident contacted Mr Claridge, convinced the snake might be his own missing pet.<\/p>\n
However, it proved to be a false alarm, as the man’s spider python turned up safe and well the following day.<\/p>\n
Mr Claridge added: “I guess had it been in there for a long time, the poor thing would have died. I probably gave it a new lease of life,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 79-year-old man got the shock of his life earlier this week when he lifted the lid of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[380,18,16,547,5,6],"class_list":["post-108998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","tag-across-the-uk","tag-news","tag-sgg","tag-south-east","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117141775517441198","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}