– The one second that happened felt like a week. What is this? Is it real? Is it a viper? Am I bitten? Thomas Torjusen from Fredrikstad got the shock of his life on Tuesday afternoon. When he came home from a kite trip he put his shoes down for a few minutes. – Then I was going out to the store for a walk. I put my shoes on, went out, went back in and when I took my shoes off… there was a snake stuck in my foot. Having been in the shoes for a long time, Torjusen doesn’t have much left over for snakes. He shook it off, and the snake lay belly up on the floor. – I thought it was made of rubber, because I joke with a lot of people. But when I lifted it up with a kitchen knife I realized it was a real, dead snake. Thomas Torjusen from Fredrikstad got the shock of his life when he discovered a snake in his shoe on Wednesday morning. Photo: Thomas Torjusen Torjusen struggles to understand how he did not notice that he had an uninvited guest under his feet. True, it was small, only 20 centimeters, but it must have been in the shoe with his foot for a long time. – I do not get it. I must have worn the shoe with the hose inside for an hour. Not a poisonous snake Zoologist Petter Bøckman does not take long to identify the snake from Thomas’s shoe. – It is a splendid specimen of a bollworm, a young bollworm. Too bad he died, says Bøckman. – It is not often that you find snakes in clothes and shoes in Norway, but it does happen in southern regions. Now it is autumn, and then the snakes seek shelter from the dung storm. They are heat exchangers, and depend on regulating their body heat. Zoologist Petter Bøckman also says snakes seek shelter from dung beetles in autumn. But it is extremely unusual for them to hide in clothes and shoes. Photo: Kristian Elster He explains that the boerworm is Norway’s largest snake, and that it can hurt when it bites. But it is not dangerous. The boerworm is not poisonous. – It can bite if you lift it up, then it will counterattack. It is a small, cute snake and you are a large, scary mammal. The boerworm is protected, like all other snakes in Norway. But it is not on the red list, so there is no reason to report a dead houseworm. Shut up by his wife Thomas Torjusen emphasizes that he had no intention of killing the snake, even though he thinks they are disgusting. – It is always sad when animals die unnecessarily. But I didn’t do it on purpose. I must have squeezed it to death when I put the shoe on. The bug was unfortunately dead when it fell out of Torjusen’s shoe. Then it had been in there for an hour. Photo: Thomas Torjusen The practice specimen of a bollworm ended its days in a rubbish bin in Fredrikstad. Torjusen copes well, but he didn’t escape the collision completely free either. – I have taken off and put on shoes four or five times since, and I shook them each time. I wonder how long I’ll keep it up. – Also, I got scolded by my wife for putting the snake on the kitchen counter to take pictures of it. The bench is now disinfected in every possible way, laughs Torjusen.
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