Aesculupian snakes in London

I've seen some crap journlism but this takes the biscuit.

There is a feral ratsnake living in London.

So if it eats rodents then it could kill children, right? It's unknown how they got there, so it could be a secret experiment right? Maybe they are going to overthrow the government too.
 
lamna said:
I've seen some crap journlism but this takes the biscuit.

There is a feral ratsnake living in London.

So if it eats rodents then it could kill children, right? It's unknown how they got there, so it could be a secret experiment right? Maybe they are going to overthrow the government too.
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The latter, I wish they … would! :D
 
Gosh! Does that woman live in a building made of bricks or concrete blocks? Does she realise that these nasty building materials, introduced by Roman immigrants, are capable of crushing small and medium-sized children?

I don't know what's happening to The Indie these days.

Alan
 
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The truly terrifying thing about that piece is that it was printed in one of the UK's broadsheet "quality" papers.

It wasn't just the herpetology that was defective.
The snakes that are thought to originate from Yugoslavia
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The journalist appears not to have noticed that Yugoslavia ceased to exist in 2003!!
 
I read something else about this last week, Apparently there is a colony of these snake in and around the regents canal area the London wildlife trust want them destroyed.
Of course there is also the EU wide legislation being debated at present regarding invasive species. So it comes as no surprise really. Panic people and they will happily want private animal keeping banned.
 
dean said:
I read something else about this last week, Apparently there is a colony of these snake in and around the regents canal area the London wildlife trust want them destroyed.
Of course there is also the EU wide legislation being debated at present regarding invasive species. So it comes as no surprise really. Panic people and they will happily want private animal keeping banned.
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They've been there a good 15-20 years, to my certain knowledge. Since their prey base will be based around non-native European Rabbits and non-native Brown Rats I'm not sure that there is a problem. But since when have the press ever let the facts get in the way of a good story?:rolleyes:
 
In the last 14 days three children have been seriously injured by dogs. Do we eradicate the dog population?

The annoying think is that each time the dog owner claims their dog to be docile and one even went furthur and said if a two year old girl had not been feeding the ducks she would not have been attacked. She scared his dog.

These snakes are harmless to humans, leave them alone.
 
Aescalapian snakes in London

If my dog sees anyone feeding ducks he eats the duck food. But then he's a nice dog.
 
I suspect they aren't going to be a problem. The UK is probably just a little bit too cold for them to truly thrive.

I suspect that they are much like our red necked wallabies, surviving, breeding, but not not really expanding and very vulnerable to bad winters.

Trying to wipe out either strikes me as petty and a waste of resources.

I think I've figured out what's happened. Someone's spotted one, told someone who needed to make and article, and they've copied and sensationalized this much more sensible article from 2010, misspelling Aesculapian along the way.
Feature: "The Camden Creature" - An amphibian and reptile trust says our waterways are alive with some exotic creatures | Islington Tribune

The article mentions they are from the former Yugoslavia, also an Inner London Education Authority where they might have escaped from.
 
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