A MUM has been given the shock of her life after finding a 5ft long Taiwanese Beauty Rat Snake hanging just outside her family's kitchen window.
Lisa Pell, from Flixborough, Scunthorpe, had just returned home from work when she spotted the snake draped across the pagoda.
The mum of three, who has a phobia of snakes, said: "I've never seen a grass snake before so to spot this outside my kitchen window, hanging from the pagoda was terrifying.
"I've no idea where it came from, we live in a small village and our garden is surrounded on all four sides, so I don't know how it got in."
After noticing that it had an audience, the snake then decided to explore their garden further, finally finding a resting spot in a pile of wood further into the yard.
Lisa, who runs her own t-shirt printing business, said she had desperately called the RSPCA and her local vet for help on July 19.
But the family tried to take matters into their own hands, with Lisa's son, Scott, attempting to capture their scaly visitor.
The 24-year-old said: "I'm a bit of a nature person and thought I’d be able to get hold of it easily, but as I went to pick it up from the wood pile it hissed at me and jumped up as if it wanted to bite me.
"It was scary and at that point I thought, 'nope, this is not for me'."
On his return from work, Lisa's husband Richard, 48, was then tasked with catching the snake - which is normally found on the other side of the world in Southeast Asia, particularly Taiwan.
Richard eventually managed to catch the snake by getting hold of its head and tail to keep it under control.
Praising his dad's efforts, Scott said: "He's very cool, calm and collected in these sorts of situations and luckily he managed to keep everything under control."
The Pells then took the snake to the Old Registry Vets in Scunthorpe where the snake was identified as a Taiwanese Beauty Rat Snake.
A spokesperson for the vets said: "the snake was very agitated and quite stressed out.
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"We don't usually deal with this sort of animal here and we don't think it would make an ideal pet snake really; it's a quite fast species and is known to be wild and pretty aggressive."
No one has come forward to claim the snake yet but "a friend of one of the vets has agreed to foster it" as the vets don't have the correct facilities to look after it.
They can grow to be up to 6ft long and can live for up to 15 to 25 years.
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