Lelystad residents find 1.2-meter-long snake in their living room
An uninvited guest caused an uproar in a Lelystad home on Friday evening. Residents noticed a 1.2-meter-long snake slithering through their living room and into the TV cabinet. The animal ambulance Witte Gerrit went to retrieve the animal, which turned out to be a non-venomous rat snake.
“The residents were quite shocked, of course. A snake is crawling around that’s over 1.2 meters long,” Gerdina Visscher of Witte Gerrit told NU.nl. The snake was as thick as a human arm. “But when we got closer, we saw it was a rat snake. They’re not venomous. Of course, they can jump and bite. But I think it hurts more when you get bitten by a crow.”
According to Visscher, they initially hesitated to respond. “We work 24 hours a day in principle, only after 9:00 p.m. for emergencies. This was, of course, a real emergency. We thought for a moment: should we do this? But yes, of course. Of course, they couldn’t sleep with a snake slithering through their house. You can’t do that to them.”
The animal ambulance workers captured the snake using the kind of tongs you use to pick up waste. “You’d rather not use them, of course, but you can’t just pick up a snake like that,” Visscher said.
Where the animal came from remains a mystery. “We have no idea. You’d think you’d miss such a big snake if you lost it. But maybe people are on vacation, or maybe they’re careless.”
