A family were shocked to find a dead snake in their Christmas wreath.
Bizarre on Female First
The Gaskell family, from the Isle of Man, noticed a fishy smell when they purchased the festive decoration.
Karl Gaskell cut open the string holding the wreath together and pulled out the dead reptile.
It is thought that the snake crawled into the straw to hibernate before the stalks were collected and squashed to make the wreath.
Karl said: ''The smell was so bad. The smell lingered for days!
''I don't know what compelled me to put my nose up to the wreath after I spotted these strange grey scales, but I did.
''You could tell it was some kind of dead animal - a reptile, not a mammal.''
Karl admitted that he was frightened that the snake could be lethal.
He said: ''For a moment, I panicked because I thought, 'What if it was from China?' I suddenly thought that if it had come from Asia somehow, poisonous snakes remain poisonous long after they've died. So I had it checked out by the Natural History Museum, who got straight back to me.''