You have WHAT?! In your WHERE?!

Yes! We have SNAKES in our ATTIC!
Or technically in the first floor, it was built to be inhabited but has not been for some time.
Before you panic and refuse ever to visit us it is not as bad as it sounds (honest)
We were of course rather put out when we saw them mating up there one day - we thought the scrabbling was from mice. So we went to the Mairie (town hall) and asked what they thought we should do. They were very kind and sypathetic (we need to get round to taking them some chocolates) and called 'M. Le Serpent' who came round immédiatement to have a look. It seems it is a grass snake who are, in his words, 'aussi dangereux que d'un papillon' or as dangerous as a butterfly. I guess I have never seen a grass snake before because I imagined they were about 15cm long, but this one is quite normal for an adult at a bit over a meter.

He said that it is very unlikely to come downstairs (they are very shy) and checked that he couldn't see any way it could do so. His advice was that we clear round the house and it will go away of it's own accord because they don't like being in uncovered areas. The biggest part of doing this is clearing the big jumble of 'weird wood' that is in the covered area between the house and the bread oven. We have been at it for some time now and have reduced it from giant to just a bit big. A few more days solid work should see it cleared. We have found some cast skins in there so looks like the snake man might be right that they are spending time in there.

We have moved a bit already at this point

Wood already removed when the previous photo taken

Doug at work

After several days - still a lot to do

We have also scythed and strimmed round the whole house and removed a lot of weeds and bushes. There is still a lot more work to do there also. We are thinking of getting a more macho strimmer to make it easier.
In addition we spend time upstairs stamping every day so it is a less quiet nice place to live for wildlife...


We weren't going to mention it because we don't want it to put anyone off visiting, but we are spending a lot of our time at the moment on 'de-snaking' so felt we needed to mention it...! Don't let the lack of hot water or shower put you off either :)