A LONER pet owner who drunkenly decapitated her two snakes with scissors before swallowing their heads has escaped an immediate jail sentence.
Jennifer Lampe, 28, was discovered by police with the still-moving but headless body of her boa constrictor around her neck and both reptiles’ severed heads in her trouser pockets.
She had “vomited up” the heads after swallowing them, telling animal inspectors she had “wanted to keep them”.
She was given a four-month jail term suspended for two years yesterday in what magistrates called an “unpleasant, not to say bizarre, incident” of animal cruelty.
She was also banned from keeping animals for five years.
Telford Magistrates’ Court in Shropshire was also told how weeks before the decapitations she threw her pet hamster in a fish tank and watched it drown, explaining later it had been making too much noise in the night.
RSPCA prosecutor Roger Price told court she then “put the dead hamster in a chest freezer”, but its contents were later emptied. On another occasion she admitted putting an unwanted cat in a carrier bag, taking it on a “long bus ride” and then releasing the animal.
She had twice tried to rid herself of the cat, having successfully disposed of a second cat which she “dumped behind a fence”.
Mr Price, of Church Stretton, Shropshire, said Lampe killed the boa constrictor and a smaller ball python on April 8 because she feared she was set to be made homeless and would be unable to look after them.
Lampe, of Market Drayton, had already pleaded guilty to causing unnecessary suffering to the snakes.
Sarah Cooper, representing Lampe, said her client was a vulnerable “loner” who had “some mental health problems”, a drink problem and was currently taking anti-depressants.
Chairman of the bench Sue Tyrrell, sentencing, said: “I’m sure you are aware, it has to be said, this is a rather unpleasant, not to say bizarre, incident.”
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