Maudlintown man Nicky Kearney got the fright of his life last Wednesday when he bent down to pick up a tool in his shed and a three foot snake coiled around his arm.
The Antelope Road resident believes that the reptile had been hiding in sawdust underneath his workbench and only emerged after it was disturbed.
Uninjured in the incident, Mr Kearney quickly called his sister Brigid Hatchell who lives nearby in the Faythe.
“I wouldn’t have believed it, only I saw it for myself” exclaimed Mrs Hatchell.
The brother and sister were puzzled as to how the reptile came to be in the shed and promptly contacted the WSPCA and two local vets.
However, they were told that there were no facilities available to house the snake so the family decided to keep it until they could find a new owner for it.
Their niece Emma Taaffe took the snake to her home and turned to the Internet for advice on how to look after a pet of this kind.
“She got a container and put holes in it and she put the snake into it to keep it warm. She looked up on the net what she needed to do to look after it,” said Mrs Hatchell.
Sadly the snake did not survive and died a short time later.
“It was a pity that there was no happy ending, but I would imagine the snake was dying after being out in the cold and hungry,” she said.
Mrs Hatchell was playing darts in Billy Kelly’s on Friday night when a couple of neighbours joked about the discovery. It later transpired that a neighbour on Antelope Road had lost a pet snake almost four weeks previously.
It is believed that this was the same snake and it had managed to survive in the garden eating mice and keeping warm in Mr Kearney’s shed.