Estate agents are used to all kinds of customers but the one that appeared in Miller & Son's Camborne office was more slippery than the norm.

Negotiator Kate Wearne was alone and checking some property details when her colleagues Mandi Kinver and Gemma Laity returned to the office. They saw what they thought to be a plastic snake on the floor in the middle of the room.

Kate said: “We all thought it was some kind of practical joke. It looked like a plastic snake because it was laid out straight and not moving. I thought Gemma and Mandi had put it there to frighten me when I wasn't looking and they thought it was me trying playing a joke on them. Then all of a sudden his head moved! We were dumbstruck.”

Events moved fast after that. Kate and Gemma climbed on to chairs, whilst Mandi bravely stayed on the ground. They tried to phone their manager but couldn't get through - then remembered that the tenant from the flat upstairs had told them that his snake had disappeared just after Christmas.

“We were all near the front door and Gemma and I went around to the flat to get the tenant whilst Mandi kept watch,” added Kate. “Steve, who lives there, came down to the office with us and was over the moon to see his snake, Albie.”

No one knows where Albie, who measures about a metre and a half, has been for the last six months or what he had been eating but a delighted Steve promised the escapee a nice meal of mice followed by a bath.

“I hate snakes,” confessed Kate. “It's all been very funny but that's one slippery customer we are quite glad to see the back of!”