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handtightenonly
Reminds me of living in a squat in Tottenham one winter.
The place was overrun with mice.
One of us, Tom, bought home an Indian Rock Python that he bought from some bloke in the pub. He was told they eat mice.
The house was so cold the snake was sort of hibernating, but Tom didn't know much about snakes. A week later the bloke in the pub sold Tom a mouse to train it to eat. We had that mouse for years, it was called Mitzy.
Anyway another week went by, the mice were still all over the place, Mitzy had a little cage and some food and used to sit in our pockets for warmth. The snake hadn't moved a muscle.
Tom said the bloke in the pub said to warm the place up, but we had no gas only electric and we never really got the place warm enough despite trying.
Then Tom came back from the pub with the idea of putting the snake in a bath full of warm water to get it active. So we heated some water, and half filled the bath. We weren't too sure how warm, and it certainly wasn't too hot, and we put the snake in.
It just sank to the bottom. After a minute or so it lifted its head to the top so the nostrils were just clear, and it could breathe. After about ten minutes the water was cooling off, so Tom went and got a kettle of hot water and added that. Eventually it cooled a bit so Tom put more water in. This went on for quite a while. We left him to it.
Then Tom called us, the snake was becoming active! We all piled into the bathroom and looked at the still completely still snake.
Tom added some more hot water.
Then the snake became active, it thrashed around in the bath and we all shot out through the door and slammed it shut.
Tom went back in and the snake had vanished.
Somebody else went in to look for it and he found it coiled around the pipes below the sink. It was there for a few days and Tom eventually somehow removed it and took it away, I'm not sure where.
I think living with a bunch of people who refused to use the bathroom eventually forced him to do something about it.
I have no idea if we ever did solve the mouse problem.