THERE was something different on the menu in one Dorchester house when a baby snake slithered out of the celery.

Gareth Jones was preparing his packed lunch when he got the fright of his life as he pulled the vegetable out of the fridge.

He said: "Just as I got the packet out this little snake dropped out and sat there flicking its tongue at me. I got a bit of a shock."

Luckily for Mr Jones, 49, his daughter Rhiannon is an animal management student at Kingston Maurward college and was able to think on her feet.

He said: "I carefully left the snake in the fridge while I went and got Rhiannon. She got it into a box to take it to be identified.

"I don't know very much about snakes, so obviously we were a bit worried in case it was poisonous.

"It's a great way to start the day - it really got the adrenaline pumping. It was a charming little critter and it definitely stared at me."

Rhiannon, 18, put some gloves on to protect herself from any bite and shepherded the pencil-length creature into a box.

She said: "I thought it was best to get it identified, so I took it into college to a reptile specialist."

Rhiannon, who is hoping to do a degree in animal behaviour and welfare at Plymouth University, says dealing with the snake should make her the envy of her fellow students.

She said: "I suppose it's always best to get some hands-on experience, even if I wasn't quite sure what I was doing."

After seeing reptile experts, who said it was probably a harmless aquatic snake from Spain, the father and daughter, of Culliford Road, took both snake and celery back to Tesco, where they had bought the unusual package the day before.

Mr Jones said: "Apparently in circumstances like this their policy is to get an extermination company to kill the animal and then identify it, but we asked them to look after it and re-house it with someone who knows how to cope with it.

"The manager said they would, which is good news."

A spokesman for Tesco said final identification had not been completed, but it was believed that the snake was a natrix maura, or viperine, a harmless fish-eating snake that lives in the watercourses of southwest Europe.

She said: "The integrity of our products is of utmost importance to us. We are now carrying out a full investigation into how this happened. Our suppliers have already carried out the necessary checks to assure us this was a rare and isolated incident. We are hoping to re-house the snake with a local expert later this week."