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02 Dec 2025

'It bit my brother' - RTE's Liveline hears wild story of snake slithering up pub toilet

Clare dog warden Frankie Coote told the true and unusual story of a snake and a pub toilet on Kieran Cuddihy's RTE show

'It bit my brother' - RTE's Liveline hears wild story of snake slithering up pub toilet

Photo of Paddy Quinn pub via Tripadvisor || Inset: File Photo

A Clare pub was once flushed with fear after a snake was discovered in the bathroom, according to Clare dog warden Frankie Coote, who featured on a recent episode of Liveline on RTÉ Radio 1.

Frankie told the true story of one of his more bizarre cases involving an exotic animal which happened in Paddy Quinn's, a popular pub in the centre of Ennis town.

He recounted how one night he went into the pub when he wasn't working for a pint and the barman said to him: "I had to ask a man to leave."

When Frankie questioned why, he told him that the man had gone into the gentleman's toilets and once he returned he was adamant that a snake had come up into the toilet bowl.

To which Frankie replied: "Ah stop Johnny, don't give him no more beer."

However the following morning he received a phone call from Johnny saying "you're not going to believe it, a snake came up the toilet."

Read next: 'Everything expired' - Dangerous driver arrested after Gardaí find long list of offences

He said that his brother Joe and Samantha Cleary called out to the pub and Samantha caught the snake, but not before it bit his brother.

Following a social media post of the capture of the snake from the toilet, they received a call from a man living in a nearby estate, that it was his snake that had escaped down his toilet six months prior.

Revealing that the snake had been living in the Ennis sewer system for six months prior to being discovered in the toilet at Paddy Quinn's.

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