VILLAGERS have been put on snake alert after a 5ft-long boa constrictor and four other slithery reptiles were found dumped in undergrowth.

The warning came after the country lanes around Worston, near Clitheroe, became an icy graveyard.

While three of the snakes have now been recovered by environmental health officers and two are due to be picked up later today, residents have been told to look out for any more exotic visitors.

The incidents have prompted the RSPCA to renew calls for people to only buy snakes if they have the time and money to look after them properly.

Managers at the nearby Clitheroe Auction Mart, which sometimes sells snakes as part of its weekly Bird Market, have moved to deny suggestions the reptiles may have been bought there.

Four of the snakes were found by Worston resident Lynda England, 56, who came across their frozen bodies while out walking along Worston Old Road.

Two of them, a 5ft boa constrictor and a 2ft corn snake, have now been recovered by environmental health officials while two smaller ones, as yet unidentified, have yet to be picked up.

A fifth snake, a 2ft Royal Python, was yesterday recovered from a grass verge on the other side of the A59 from Worston, at the Middlewood turnoff near Chatburn. None of the snakes found were poisonous.

Mrs England said: "I'm assuming they've been dumped by someone while still alive. I found them curled up, which is a defence mechanism against the cold.

"I was taken aback when I came across this boa constrictor. I found it next to a gate to a field that has my horse in it."

Linda Jones, environmental health officer at Ribble Valley Council, said: "The Auction Mart is only a quarter of a mile away and they sometimes sell snakes, so they might have come from there.

"The concern is someone's going round dumping them and we don't know if there are more out there."

John Swingler, manager of the auction mart, in Lincoln Way, Clitheroe, said: "At this time of year we sell very few snakes because of the cold.

"We did sell a corn snake last week, but haven't sold a boa constrictor or a python since before last autumn."

Heather Holmes, spokesman for the RSPCA in the North West, said people dumping snakes was a "constant problem".