Back in March, Anne McCabe was looking out the window of her home in the United Kingdom when she noticed her cat, Drilbur, intently watching something on the pavement. Curious, McCabe went outside to see what Drilbur was focused on.

It turns out, Drilbur had stumbled on a slow worm — a legless lizard who looks similar to a snake. McCabe noticed the slow worm was large, approximately 9 inches long. She also noticed he seemed cold and sluggish. Worried for the animal, McCabe put a cloth in a cardboard box and nestled the slow worm inside.

McCabe closed the lid on the box and placed it in a sunny room, where the slow worm could rest and warm up. Later, she returned to check on the slow worm and realized he wasn’t there. She looked everywhere.

“I searched all over the shelf and on the floor, [with] no sign of him,” McCabe told The Dodo. “Just as I was going to give up, I looked up, and there, at eye level with me, was the slow worm, peeking out of a diorama of a magician’s shop.”

It turns out, the slow worm was feeling a lot better, and he’d found a home in McCabe’s diorama.

“It was very funny seeing the slow worm looking out at me,” McCabe said. “I got a bit of a shock at first, because it was only a few inches from my face!”

Happy to see the slow worm moving again, McCabe put him back outside, where he belongs.

“[I] carefully took the diorama outside, to the sunny spot by the shed, and the slow worm slithered out and under the shed,” McCabe said.

McCabe is thrilled to have helped the slow worm warm up, even though he gave her a bit of a scare.

“We’re definitely a family of animal lovers,” McCabe said. “[We] enjoy showing and teaching our son to care and respect … nature and animals.”