A SNAKE has made hiss-tory by following his owner to work!
Mostyn, a three-year-old 5ft long black and yellow Russian rat snake, slipped away for five weeks after he sneaked out of his tank.
Astonishingly he turned up outside a set of gates which leads to AstraZeneca's sprawling Hurdsfield site - almost a mile away from his home.
Shortly afterwards he was reunited with Jackie Mills and her son 15-year-old Ben, who couldn't believe how their pet had played a perilous game of snakes and ladders, at one stage climbing up and down two sets of steps to reach his destination.
"I was astounded when I discovered the snake they found at work was Mostyn," said process operator Jackie, 49, of Tytherington Drive, Tytherington. "I can't imagine how he got there.
"I walk to work over fields, pathways and a bridge. I don't carry a big bag and he couldn't coil up in my pockets. He's too heavy not to notice."
Ben, who owns the snake, said: "He's a slippy character at the best of times, but this was amazing."
Experts believe Mostyn - slimmer after his ordeal - coincidentally turned up at AstraZeneca.
"There is no way a snake has followed or tracked a person," insisted Chester Zoo's herpetologist Isolde McGeorge. "It is beyond the realms of possibility.
"If you ask me it's a coincidence - probably a ten million to one chance of landing up where he did."
But the RSPCA who rescued Mostyn at AstraZeneca are not so sure.
"We have consulted an exotic animal expert and he said it was conceivable the snake followed up his owner's trail through a sensory gland," said spokesman Kevin Hegarty. "But the main concensus seems to be this was an amazing coincidence."
Mostyn's incredible journey meant slithering across a field, up a set of steps and over a wooden bridge which straddles the busy Silk Road, down the other side and along the Middlewood Way.
He could have branched off towards Bollington at a pathway junction - but the reptile's navigational skills were spot on as he diverted right towards Hurdsfield.
Finally, after being rescued he was reunited with Ben, Jackie and husband Stuart, 52, and their two older sons Robert, 47, and 19-year-old Paul.
And he greeted them with a really big H-U-G!
