STAFF at a Basingstoke school had to call in some expert help after the UK’s largest breed of snake was spotted on its grounds.

The slippery serpent was initially spotted by pupils at the school, which has asked to remain unnamed as to not cause alarm.

The school got in contact with Shane Jones, owner of family-run business RIDTEK Pest Control, to help move the snake on.

“Usually when we get calls about grass snakes, we tell them to leave them alone as they are non-venomous and non-threatening,” the 50-year-old told the Gazette.

“However, in this situation there was a bit of anxiety from the staff, so we decided to help.

“At first after a couple of visits we couldn’t find it, but then on Friday I got a call from the caretaker who said he had spotted it, so I went around to take it from the school grounds.”

Australian-born Shane discovered the barred grass snake in the pond of the school.

A Youtube video posed on RIDTEK’s page shows the moment when Shane calmly reaches into the pond proclaiming, ‘I think I got her, mate’.

He added: “It was an unusual call for us to receive as we mainly deal with wasp and hornets’ nests around this time of year.

“The reason we decided to take action because this is a rare kind of snake and is the largest we have here in the UK and we had to protect the snake from the children.

“She was nearly a metre long but was very calm and quite easy to handle.”

“No snakes were harmed in dealing with the snake.”

Shane said that once the female grass snake was caught, he took it to a secluded stream a couple of miles away, near Silchester, to release it back into the wild.

Shane, who runs his company in Basingstoke with his wife Roo and two sons, added he gained permission from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council before handling the protected and endangered snake.