Grass snake spotted swimming in canal

A 10-year-old girl has said she was "super excited" to have spotted a snake swimming in a canal.

Mollie was with her sister, 12, and father Richard, when she noticed a moorhen "following something" in the Cromford Canal, in Matlock, Derbyshire, last month.

She said: "I was super excited to see a snake in the wild - I've never seen one in the canal before."

Her dad Richard, from Kirkby-in-Ashfield, who filmed the sighting, said he believed it was about 4ft (1.2m) long.

A grass snake was also spotted swimming in a park in nearby Belper recently.

Derbyshire Wildlife Trust said at the time: "The size of grass snakes sometimes alarms people but they are completely harmless to us."

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