'It was panic stations. I didn't know what to do.'
A dog walker couldn’t quite believe his eyes when he stumbled across a six-foot boa constrictor snake in a Nottingham park.
Sean Dirrane was out for a stroll through Colwick Country Park with his springer spaniel-border collie cross Bow on Thursday when he spotted what he assumed was a branch lying on the path.
He said: ‘I was coming round the corner I thought: ‘That branch in the path there looks awfully like a snake’. Then as I walked closer I realised: ‘Oh no. It is a snake.’
‘It didn’t move. It was completely still. In the photograph, with it’s head up – that’s how it was when I came across it and that’s how it stayed.’
Being so still he wondered whether it was a fake snake ‘some kids’ had put there as a prank.
But he added: ‘Finally it bobbed its head down and I was in sheer panic.
‘I called Bow back – luckily he didn’t see it – and got him back on the lead. It was panic stations. I didn’t know what to do.’
With no-one else around, Sean tried to ring the local council to get in touch with a park ranger but had no luck.
The then rang police on 101 and initially struggled to get the receiver to believe him.
‘It was a pretty odd call to be making,’ he said. ‘I gave her the what3words location and luckily the snake didn’t move while I waited around for 20 minutes for the officers to arrive.
‘It’s a heavily vegetated area so if it had gone into the bushes I don’t think they would’ve found it.’
When the police arrived, Sean says he had to alert one of the officers after he walked up to the silent serpent without realising it was there.
Eventually, worried Bow’s barking might scare the snake into the grass, he left, before later hearing the snake had been removed and taken to a reptile centre.
A spokesperson for Nottinghamshire Police said: ‘Police and RSPCA colleagues were called into action after a report of a six-foot long snake was spotted slithering along a footpath in Colwick Country Park.
‘The snake, believed to be a non-venomous boa imperator (another name for boa constrictor), was encountered shortly before 4pm on Thursday.
‘A local reptile centre, which was alerted to the surprise discovery, attended and safely recovered the snake.’
In June last year, police in Birmingham had to capture a pet boa constrictor they found slithering across a busy road.
The group had been driving on patrol in Aston when they spotted the large snake, which they guided into a pillow case with the help of a broom.
Boa constrictors usually live in tropical climates in Central and South America. They are not venomous snakes, hunting their prey with sharp teeth instead.
In the wild they target animals such as rats, birds, monkeys or wild pigs and then swallow them whole, using strong stomach acids to digest them.
After one large meal, a boa does not need to eat again for weeks.
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