Venomous Snake Found In Groceries After Being Carried Home
on Apr 14, 2021
Alexander White and his partner, Amelie Neate from Sydney, Australia got away uninjured after accidentally taking a venomous snake on a 10-minute bike ride from the grocery store to their home.
“We didn’t have a trolley because neither of us had a dollar coin so we were just carrying it – in retrospect that kind of freaked me out,” Alexander said, according to The Guardian.
The couple had just purchased a two-pack of cos lettuce from an Aldi grocery store that a snake had apparently slithered into and went to sleep. It then got placed in the supermarket’s refrigerated grocery cabinet where Alexander and Amelie picked it up.
The couple rode for 10 minutes by bike to their home and started unpacking the groceries when they got there. That’s when they spotted the serpent. They immediately called wildlife rescue organization Wires who told them it may be a highly aggressive baby eastern brown snake.
“It was moving around and flicking its little tongue out,” Alexander said. “It was actually its tongue which let me know it wasn’t a giant worm. I would have been more comfortable with a worm, to be honest.”
After taking many pictures of the snake, experts told them that it was a pale-headed snake that was still venomous and to contain it until they could get there. They placed it in a container and video called their children to show them since they weren’t home.
They also checked the rest of the groceries and surrounding area in the house for any more snakes that could have potentially slithered away in the home. Eventually, around 10:30pm a snake handler from Wires arrived and transferred the animal to a heated container.
Wires and Aldi investigated the incident and traced the origins of where the lettuce came from and found it was from Toowoomba, Australia. Authorities are working together to get the snake transferred back to its home in the wild.
Alexander said, “I have eaten the lettuce. I washed it thoroughly. There were a couple of things that I had determined to be snake poo but I washed that off and had a salad wrap today. People always say ‘wash your lettuce’ and I think I’ve been guilty in the past of not washing my vegetables, but I think the lesson from this is to always wash your lettuce.”
“And also check whether your bags of lettuce are open,” added Amelie.
