A mum was mortified to discover an army of snails slithering around her house after her son tried to save them from the rain.
Toni-Anne Lacey, 26, had been admiring her garden's snail population with five-year-old Rye Bowles when the inquisitive youngster noticed it starting to rain and asked to help them escape the water.
She happily handed him a tub to collect them but he then asked if they could sleep inside so they put a lid on them, before the schoolboy went off to bed.
But later that evening as Toni-Anne woke up for a drink, she was horrified to find her kitchen had been taken over by 30 slime-covered creatures.
The creepy-crawlies had squeezed through a tiny gap in the plastic container as the lid hadn't been put on properly and traced across the stay-at-home mum's kitchen counter.
Stomach-churning photos show the creatures on her fridge, perched on her kettle, climbing a jar of coffee and even leaving slime all over her newly-washed clothes.
After an hour of frantically cleaning and rounding her the shelled escape artists, Toni-Anne has now vowed never to have mini beasts in the house again.
She said: "They were all over the kitchen. It was quite a shock.
"Rye loves the outdoors and nature. He loves animals and bugs and just likes collecting them from the garden.
"He asked if they could sleep inside. He has a little tub that he likes to keep them in.
"Even though snails love the rain he thought they were trying to escape the water. He put them all in the tub, brought them inside and went to bed.
"I got up to make a drink a few hours later and realised he hadn't put the lid on properly."
As the bleary-eyed mum-of-two flicked on the lights and prepared to grab a drink, she claims she first spotted one of the snails on her fridge door - between spanning the room and finding more 'all over'.
Toni-Anne, from Great Yarmouth, said: "It was funny. I just turned the light on, went to the fridge to get a drink and noticed them straight away. [One] was on the side of the fridge.
"They were all over the worktop, the washing and crawling down to the floor. There was one on the kettle. Everyone found that the funniest.
"They'd trailed their way through clean washing and they were on the fridge as well. You could see all their slime everywhere and it was a nightmare to clean up. It took me about an hour to clean the kitchen again.
"There were around 20 or 30 but luckily they hadn't all got out. The lid was slightly off to the side so they were escaping through the gap."
Little Rye and his brother Rheo, two, were then on high-alert for days searching the house for any more escapees, but to Toni-Anne's relief she had managed to evict them all.
Toni-Anne said: "We were expecting a few to pop up around the house over the next few days but I think I managed to put them all outside. I didn't come across any more.
"Everyone was saying how funny it was and say they'd burn the house down. I'm quite a relaxed parent to be honest and nothing really phases me so I just put them outside.
"This isn't going to happen again. They'll be staying outside from now on."
