Man wakes up with hangover Dwayne Matthews, 29, found the huge snake 'rearing up with its jaws open' It was ready to pounce on his friend who was asleep on the sofa Matthews bought the 14kg beast called Bruce from a traveller He was convicted after admitting receiving stolen goods A hungover father woke from a heavy drinking session to find a 10ft python which he had drunkenly bought from a gypsy the previous evening trying to eat his friend. Dwayne Matthews, 29, found the huge snake 'rearing up with its jaws open' ready to pounce on his friend who was asleep on the sofa. Matthews had bought the 14kg beast, called Bruce, the night before from a traveller with the intention of selling it on to fund his new guttering business. Horror: A hungover father woke from a heavy drinking session to find this 10ft python called Bruce - which he had drunkenly bought from a gypsy the previous evening - trying to eat his friend After waking to find the python rearing up in an S-shape, panicking Matthews managed to throw a blanket over the snake before bundling it into a glass cage. The next day he tried to flog the giant African rock snake to a local reptile shop who called police when they became suspicious. Matthews was handed an eight week prison sentence suspended for two years when he admitted receiving stolen goods at Coventry Magistrates Court last Friday. The court heard the python had been stolen along with eight others from an out-house in Hillfields, Coventry. Speaking about the incident on January 11, Richard Baker, defending, told the court: 'Mr Matthews was drinking at a house in Willenhall with friends. A van pulled up and a traveller offered for sale this 10 to 15ft-long rock snake. Worrying: Dwayne Matthews, 29, found the huge snake 'rearing up with its jaws open' ready to pounce on his friend who was asleep on the sofa In his wisdom, and no doubt egged on by his inebriated friends, he decided it would be a good idea to buy it and sell it. 'The next morning he realised it hadn't been such a good idea. He got up, went into the lounge, where the snake was being kept, to find one of his friends asleep on the sofa and this snake rearing up at him in an S-shape, its jaws open like a cobra. Instead of running out of the house, as some would have done, and leaving his friend to his fate, he apprehended this snake. He ran upstairs, got a quilt and thew it over the snake to subdue it and put it back in the tank. 'He didn't decide to get rid of it by dumping it in a bin, he was doing the best he could to remedy the situation. After going to the shop they were going to give it to Twycross Zoo. Police warned local stores about the raid and when Matthews attempted to offload the snake to KBN Reptiles they contacted detectives. African rock snakes, the world's third largest snake, are constrictors which attack animals as big as crocodiles and antelopes, suffocating them in their coils before swallowing them whole. One even devoured a ten-year-old boy in South Africa in 2007. Sentencing Matthews, magistrates said: 'This was a bit of a foolhardy enterprise.' Matthews was also told to pay £85 costs and an £80 victim surcharge and ordered to undergo eight weeks supervision. The python was later reunited with his owner, David Chance, 24, from Hillfields. Mr Chance said: 'We normally feed him a dead rabbit one week and a dead rat the next. 'He's usually so gentle and but whoever took him had handled him wrong. He had two holes in his head and he was badly bruised.