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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
National
Sam Smedley & Rebecca Cooley & Tim Hanlon

Landlord discovers giant 7ft snake hiding in piles of rubbish left by tenants

A landlord has told how he found a massive seven-feet boa constrictor along with another live snake and two dead, as well as a scorpion and a tarantula, after evicting tenants.

Landlord Phil Tewkesley, 47, made the shocking discoveries after he was able to remove the occupants who he claimed had been refusing to go for months.

When he finally was able to enter the bungalow he found it full of rubbish including the four snakes - two dead and two alive - fish, bugs crawling across the carpets and even a scorpion and tarantula, reported LancsLive.

The tenant was allegedly an animal lover who had rescued the snakes and other creatures.

The landlord has now shared shocking footage of the trashed home, near Kendal, and the abandoned creatures.

Phil Tewkesley with his partner Lisa McCartney, found the snake in the house (Kennedy News and Media)

Phil, from Worsley, said: "It was unbelievable, the sheer volume of not just belongings but actual rubbish and food. I've never seen anything like it in my life - it was like a rubbish dump with a roof on it.

"The neighbours said they were hoarders - they got deliveries every day and never threw anything out. There was mould growing from the carpet and it was full of urine, mealworms - you name it, it was rotten.

"There was also evidence in a number of spots of rodent damage and a bit of an infestation with holes gnawed through places around the house.

"The daughter's room was the worst - my partner Lisa cleared that and had to run out of the house heaving and retching numerous times because of the stench of urine.

"I saw this huge tank and it was dirty. I looked a bit closer into the tank and got the shock of my life - there was this gigantic snake curled up.

Phil admitted running out of the house screaming when he saw the snake (Kennedy News and Media)
Phil claimed that the tenants were "hoarders" (Kennedy News and Media)

"I was terrified, I screamed and ran out of the house because the shock of seeing something like that was unbelievable."

Phil issued a formal notice for the tenants to vacate the bungalow upon his return to the UK in late 2020, after living abroad for six years.

But the couple, who lived in the property with their teen daughter, didn't leave for another year, it is reported.

Phil, an HR manager, gained access to his property in December last year and then made the grim discovery that the entire three-bedroom house was piled high with rubbish and housing both dead and live exotic animals.

He phoned the RSPCA and left a spare key with the neighbours, allowing them to come and collect the 'gigantic' snake.

The RSPCA officers also called the police, who sent an officer to witness the recovery of the animals.

Phil evicted the tenants after living abroad (Kennedy News and Media)
The bungalow had several exotic creatures (Kennedy News and Media)

Once they were removed, the locks were changed and the tenant was given a month to remove the rest of his belongings before the clean up could begin.

It took the landlord, his partner Lisa McCartney, 40, and some friends around 54 stomach-churning hours to clear all of the rubbish and rip the soiled carpets out.

Phil said: "I initially hired three skips - at £250 each - and we filled them in one day, followed by another two which were full to the brim as well. I also had to pay for the council to do a large collection of the sofa and kitchen appliances because they were rotten.

"It cost about £1,200 just to get rid of their stuff and the stuff they'd wrecked and it's going to cost tens of thousands to get it back to how it should have been.

"It's been a really stressful period, trying to get him to leave and then to find what I found.

"We're getting married at the end of this year so it's something we really didn't need to have to deal with."

Phil, who said he felt the new rule, introduced due to Covid, of giving tenants six months to find somewhere new to live was 'fair', setting the vacation deadline at April 2021.

Throughout the house there was rubbish dumped (Kennedy News and Media)

But in January of that year, he got the first hint that something was wrong at the property when his application to release capital from the bungalow to help fund a new house deposit was rejected due to the state of the property.

A spokesperson for the RSPCA said: "We can confirm that four snakes - two sadly dead and two alive - were removed from a property in [Cumbria] by the RSPCA following a report from a member of the public. The live snakes were rehomed at a specialist boarding facility.

"As there is now a live investigation, we are not able to provide any further information at the moment."

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