By IANS
London : It was an immigration scare of the creepy kind.
When a plumbers’ merchant in Radcliffe in north-west England received a shipment of pipes from India this week, his employees discovered a two-and-a-half foot snake that had apparently smuggled itself in and had travelled all the way here.
For a while, the snake caused panic at the merchant’s offices, and one of the warehouses had to be closed for almost six hours. Some feared that it was a rare and poisonous snake, and staff were prohibited from entering the warehouse.
Two brave employees were given the task of guarding the snake while staff waited nervously for experts to arrive and identify the reptile, reports from Radcliffe said.
The snake, which was green with a black and white collar, lashed out at one of the warehouse employees, before falling asleep in a corner.
Photographs of the snake were faxed to the Reptile Rescue Centre in Hawkshaw. It was only when the experts at the centre assured the merchant’s employees that it was a harmless grass snake that the warehouse doors were opened. The snake was then taken to the centre.
Antony Poppleton, an official of the Sain-Gobain, the merchant’s parent company, said: “The manager did exactly as we would have expected him to do.
“There had been a crate of pipes that had come into the warehouse that morning from India and we were unsure what the snake was, whether it was a humble grass snake, or something far more sinister.
“The warehouse was immediately closed until we could get an expert to confirm it was a grass snake.”