to be really scared and pissed off with the RSPCA.

[HelenaDove]

Last Weds night a snake found its way into my kitchen. It was on the wall above the cooker.

I heard the saucepans ding and saw it, I freaked out i called the RSPCA. They asked loads of questions. They said it was a corn snake Im incredibly phobic. They told me to go round all my neighbours at midnight and ask if its someones pet. They refused to come out. So did the police when i phoned them. In desperation i phoned the council and got my third refusal. So DH tried to catch it to put it outside It was too fast and got through a hole in the kitchen floor. We filled the holes at the instruction of the RSPCA. My 65 year old husband with a heart condition had to try and deal with it I was and still am a wreck. RSPCA phoned at 8.30 am the next morning (Thurs) to ask if it was still there after telling me to "leave it" (they didnt give a fuck about the cat i told them i have) Didnt ask whether i have young children or a baby in a cot. During The Thurs morn phone call she told me to call again if the snake comes back. Well at midnight DH saw it trying to get through the venty bit in the window of the communal hallway and managed to gently shove it outside.
Phoned RSPCA again who again told me that they cant come out at this hour and can only come out during the daytime. Ive been living in fear since last Weds. Woman on Thurs promised me they would come out if it appeared again.

The guy on the phone tonight warned me that if the snake gets hurt i would be prosecuted.
But they WONT come out Im petrified Snakes are nocturnal FFS! My nerves are fucking bad. DH has had to take extra GTN spray

I googled earlier and found this. And they had the cheek to tell this couple it was "crossed wires" And like this couple we are in Essex too.

www.express.co.uk/news/uk/493358/Man-removes-five-foot-snake-from-kitchen

Its a bloody great housing estate Silver And the handler and the warden told me corn snakes can cover several miles.

The woman i spoke to from the RSPCA also told me it was very likely to be wild.

I was bloody frantic at the time DH was trying to catch it and i was concerned about the stress on his condition.

"Sounds like the OP is quite self-entitled in my opinion, particularly with the comments about not her responsibility to check neighbours hadn't lost a snake."

Well it isn't, is it??

Maybe a course to learn to handle your phobia might help. If you hadn't acted so hysterically then your husband wouldn't have been so stressed. Phobias suck but can be overcame in a lot of cases.

Oh come on - they had a strange snake in their house. Most people would be freaked out by that I think, this is the UK not Brazil.

I'm glad it's all sorted now OP. My best friend used to have a snake and I loved watching the soaps with her wrapped round my arm and tickling my hand with her tongue, but that's worlds away from a snake just appearing out of nowhere in your kitchen. People can tell you you over-reacted once they've been through the same experience!

Oh and I've twice had my escapologist tortoise returned to me by neighbours standing in the garden and shouting "Has anyone lost a tortoise?" Little buggers can move surprisingly fast over distance and climb as it turns out.

It's actual aims sweet are as far as I can work out are to be a political tool and to provide well paid jobs for those at the top.
Although if I put aside what's gone wrong with the rspca, it's aims are purely for animal welfare, not what is best for the humans involved. Because otherwise you get huge conflicting interests within the same organisation. Eg if I have massive mental health issues and keep 25 dogs in a bedsit on £10 a week, and everyone agrees that from a mh point of view removing them isn't in my interest, the rspca has a duty to purely look after the dogs needs, not mine. The mh organisations have a duty to ensure I get support/ treatment and to protect me from prosecution for deliberate cruelty. Because otherwise the conflict of interest means neither me or the dogs get our needs met due to internal conflict from 2 factions in the same organisation, funding and expertise in the problem at hand. Same thing happens in adult/ child social work etc, basically anywhere there's a conflict of interest. I realise my dogs analogy is more complex than ops snake situation, but even on a basic funding issue it causes problems, eg they'd be spending £x to help a person which means £x less to spend on animals. And because if you start blurring the lines, where do you actually draw it.
The only conflicting interest charities have is balancing what is best for animal welfare against maximum donations to improve it. And even ones that aren't the rspca and actually live up to their aims struggle to get that right. Eg if they did the sensible thing and shot all the horses in sanctuaries that will never be rehomed and cost a disproportionate amount in health needs, they could actually improve welfare for the larger number of potentially healthy horses that go through abbatoirs simply because nobody wants them, or are shot at home by owners that can't afford to keep them. Let alone the money that would be released for education, campaigning for better laws, acting on reports of cruelty etc. But the public backlash (from those with no awareness, which is most) would cause such a huge dent in donations it would be counter productive.

Christ on a bike, I'm sure some of the people being so needlessly unkind to OP, would have shit themselves finding a snake in their kitchen!

It is the responsibility of the owner to put up posters, not the findee, in fact my pet's insurance policy pays an allowance for this if our pet goes missing.

In fact, surely it's the responsibility of the owner to make sure said snake doesn't get out and scare the crap out of other tenants?

As people are being so mean, I won't share the story of my six foot six tattooed, skinhead DH trembling and refusing to go in the lounge until I caught the mouse the cat had brought in...

Christ there are some idiots on this thread.

Glad it's sorted OP, might be worth calling the RSPCA to report the idiot owner & they can visit to make sure they're actually capable of owning a snake.

If you came on here and said there was a tiger loose in your house, don't come on mumsnet. You'd be being very very unreasonable if you told them that you wanted some help off the RSPCA.

Tbh, if I found a snake in the house & was able, then I might just manage to put it outside.

Might not even occur to me that it was a pet & would die!

IKnowIAm the handler was looking adoringly at it. Said he would have no trouble rehoming it if thats what was needed.

Damn, I'm too late, would've come and got it to try and solve mice problem we have here!

No sweet because a tiger, unlike a corn snake, isn't something that you can deal with reasonably yourself as long as you aren't phobic. The emergency services would be involved with a tiger because it can be presumed to pose a risk to human life, and the rspca or similar would be involved purely for the tigers interest and to provide both the equipment and knowledge to recapture it because otherwise the chances are a police marksman would just shoot it.

Glad the problem is solved!

Here in the US we have companies whose job is to remove unwanted animals (usually wildlife) from people's houses. We used one called Critter Control on a couple of occasions, once when we had a dead squirrel in our chimney and once when live squirrels had set up house in our porch roof. They set traps to catch the live squirrels, released them elsewhere, and blocked the hole they had been using to get into the porch roof. Do you have companies that do that kind of thing in the UK? I rang them instead of the police or the ASPCA when I had a problem with unwanted animals in my house. You might want to look into companies like this, in case this kind of thing happens again. I would be surprised if you don't have people who do this kind of work in the UK.

Christ there are some idiots on this thread.

Couldn't agree more IKnowIAm (great name btw).

There was actually someone earlier suggesting a spiked trap to maim or kill a harmless escaped pet. Can you believe what ignorant twats there are on MN sometimes?

crabby

What Lurked?

People saying grow up are not the stupid ones. A phobia has nothing to do with anything, being phobic doesn't magic up free oncall midnight snake catchers.
But Op got the whole thing dealt with for free so end of problem. She might want to stop screaming out of windows late at night though or she might get in trouble sling with snake man.

I'm sure the companies that remove unwanted animals from houses here have dealt with people freaking out when they call. Arachnophobia and phobias of snakes are common, after all, and spiders and snakes do get into people's houses. If you've got similar services, I'm sure they've dealt with scared and upset customers before, too.

There was actually someone earlier suggesting a spiked trap to maim or kill a harmless escaped pet. Can you believe what ignorant twats there are on MN sometimes?

A far more practical solution than putting posters on lampposts, facebooking the world & walking the streets with a sandwich board which is what some fools were suggesting....

But anyway, snakey was handed back to his negligent owner, so all is well!!

Should she have had to pay for a strangers snake to removed from her flat?

Can you imagine the fuss if the snake's owner had posted on AIBU suggesting even half of the things that OP's been told to do?

"I've lost my snake, in a block of flats. AIBU to make no effort at all to notify neighbours? I expect if they find it they will come and look for me or pay to have it removed."

MN would have exploded with the rage

OP, glad you got it sorted. Just ignore the bonkers posts. MN is getting particularly nasty atm, once there's a bandwagon to jump on there's no stopping some posters. They'll rip you apart no matter what you do. You could've agreed with them and you'd still have been wrong once they'd started.

If you catch a native snake in one of those, IKnow, you'll have broken the law. It is illegal to injure or kill any of our native reptiles.