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Slithery snake surprise rattles Swedish police

TT/The Local
TT/The Local - [email protected]
Slithery snake surprise rattles Swedish police
Not the snake mentioned in the ssstory. Photo: AP Photo/Andre Penner

Here's one thing worse to find in your apartment block than fluff in the dryer.

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You don't really expect to find a boa constrictor chilling out in the stairwell of your apartment block when you return home late at night. Especially not in Växjö, a fairly ordinary town in southern Sweden.

But that's exactly what happened when one surprised – and rather frightened – resident called the police at 1.43am on Thursday to get help dealing with the unwanted neighbour.

"The caller said that the snake was alive and about half a metre long," police spokesperson Linda Pleym told the TT newswire.

Officers were dispatched to the scene and managed to catch the slippery suspect an hour later.

"It's apparently a boa constrictor, according to someone who knows about snakes. The person who called us waited outside and did not want to go in, and that's understandable," said Pleym.

The boa constrictor is a common pet snake and can often become relatively tame in captivity. It is found in the wild in North and South America, where its prey includes small to medium-sized birds, bats, lizards and rodents.

Police have contacted animal experts to take care of the snake, which spent the rest of the night in custody at the station in Växjö.

"It could be a snake that got away from someone. So if anyone misses their snake they should get in touch with police," control room officer Lars Lindwall told broadcaster SVT.

The story may remind attentive The Local readers of last summer, when a series of snake sightings were reported in Sweden, including a 2.5-metre python that escaped twice in one week

Add this to the list of things you didn't expect you would have to watch out for when you moved to Sweden.

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