Who let the snakes out - and what should you do if you find one in your bed?

Snakes have been spotted on pavements and in parks, and some are even slithering into houses. Is the heatwave causing a mass breakout?Dave Fawbert says he wasn't alarmed when he came across a boa constrictor on a high street in east London after popping out to buy a loaf of bread. It wasn't moving, but the head of a pigeon was disappearing within the snake's coils. "If it had been slithering around, I'd be more freaked out because you don't know what it's going to do," says Fawbert, an editor at Shortlist.com, who posted a picture of the gruesome scene on Twitter on Saturday. "I wasn't scared because it was quite obviously motionless - the bird was halfway down its throat and I thought: 'There's no way that snake's going anywhere.'"A couple of other people had stopped, so he asked if anyone knew where it had come from. "No one seemed to know. It was completely without explanation." A crowd gathered. One person prodded it. "I just said: 'Leave it, it's not a danger to anyone.'" Except to the pigeon, he adds. Fawbert, who had been on a snake-handling experience day earlier in the year for his birthday ("I quite like snakes"), called the RSPCA, worried that people would be scared and try to kill it. Continue reading...