Margaret Pickbourne told how her husband was returning from laying out bird feed in his Derbyshire garden when he became embroiled in the strange three-way chase
A snake in pursuit of a frog ended up chasing a pensioner through his own garden and into his home, where he called his wife for backup.
Brian Pickbourne was just returning from spending time laying bird feed in his garden in Long Eaton, Derbyshire, when he turned and watched a frog bounding towards him, with a snake seen following closely behind. Fearing the serpent may have been an adder, one of the UK’s only poisonous reptiles, the pensioner rushed inside.
Brian’s wife, Margaret, who was relaxing inside when the unusual pursuit took place, ran downstairs during the commotion, with her husband calling her for help. Quick-thinking Margaret grabbed her phone and took a snap of what she said was “the most frightened frog I’ve ever seen.”
She told Nottinghamshire Live : “It was quite a shock. It was the most frightened frog I’ve ever seen. It was going completely haywire until it saw the door was open and jumped back out into the garden. Then I heard rustling and thought the snake was on the move and grabbed my phone to take a picture.”
She added that she and her husband, both in their 70s, keep their garden neatly pruned and maintain a small pond, which naturally attracts frogs. Margaret said she could barely believe her husband that he was running from a snake in mid-pursuit of a frog.
She said: “He called me and said I’ve just been chased by a frog and a snake. I thought he was joking. He said no really, come and see. I just saw the tail of the snake disappearing behind the bags of logs that we’d put in the passageway from when we felled the trees. We didn’t know what type of snake it was. My husband was hoping it wasn’t an adder.”
The couple was later able to shut the snake in their back garden and hem it in so it wouldn’t slither into their next-door neighbour’s properties, and it eventually moved on. The reptile was later identified as a grass snake, a common breed seen across the UK, after their daughter posted Margaret’s photo online.
