I woke up to find my kitchen invaded by snails my son brought inside

A mother of two woke up to discover that her kitchen was invaded by snails — after her son brought the little creatures in from the garden.

Toni-Anne Lacey, 26, and her oldest son, Rye Bowles, 5, have been admiring the growing population of snails in their garden this summer.

The two were outside one day when they noticed it was about to rain and Rye became concerned that the little creatures were trying to hide from it.

“Even though snails love the rain, he thought they were trying to escape the water,” Lacey recalled. He asked if they could “sleep inside” the house and then, before going to bed, placed them in a small tub where he liked to keep them.

“Rye loves the outdoors and nature. He loves animals and bugs and just likes collecting them from the garden,” Lacey explained to Kennedy News.

But a few hours after bedtime, his mom woke up to get a drink from the kitchen and realized that Rye must not have secured the lid properly.

She spotted a snail on the fridge — and then turned the lights on to discover her kitchen was infested.

About 30 snails were slithering around her kitchen counter and clean laundry.

“They were all over the kitchen,” she said. “It was quite a shock.”

Despite the horror, Lacey found the scene comical as she looked around the kitchen that was now overrun by the slimy creatures.

“It was funny. 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,” she recounted to Kennedy News.

“They’d trailed their way through clean washing and they were on the fridge as well.”

Lacey went to work collecting the creatures and cleaning up the trails of gooey slime.

“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,” Lacey said.

“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.”

Rye and his little brother Rheo, 2, were on the lookout for the next few days, checking every crevice and corner of the house to make sure all the snails had been collected.

“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,” Lacey said.

“Everyone was saying how funny it was and say they’d burn the house down,” she added. “I’m quite a relaxed parent, to be honest, and nothing really fazes me — so I just put them outside.”

Although Lacey remained calm about the shocking discovery, she and her boys have learned their lesson.

“This isn’t going to happen again. They’ll be staying outside from now on,” she said of the slimy temporary lodgers.