'Oh my God, it's my old pet snake Sidney'

YOU'VE heard of snakes in the grass and even snakes on a plane - but how about a snake in a skirting board?

- By DAVE ROBSON Reporter

Meet Sidney - the much-loved corn snake who's turned up 22 years after going missing in a Stockton house.

Little Sam Blackburn was a distraught 10-year-old when the pet corn snake he bought from a Darlington pet shop with money from his late grandad Harold went AWOL in the family home.

For two months, Sam happily fed Sidney frozen mice as their bond grew.

After just two months of hissing, however, Sidney went missing - and Sam thought he'd never see him again.

But as Sam, now 32, worked to replace his mum Liz’s laminated flooring at her home in Hunwick Walk, Stockton, recently, he was astonished to find Sidney's remarkably preserved remains behind the skirting board.