(Newer)
Alex White thought he was looking at a large worm wringing in plastic salad he had just brought home from a supermarket in Sydney – until a snake tongue flew. “I was completely taken aback,” White told the Associated Press. It was a poisonous pale-headed snake that, according to authorities, undertook a 540-kilometer journey to Sydney, Australia, from a packaging plant in the Australian city of Toowoomba, wrapped in plastic with two heads of lettuce. The refrigerator in the refrigerated supermarket probably calmed the cold-blooded youth until White bought the lettuce at an ALDI supermarket on Monday night and rode his bicycle home with his salad and hose in his backpack.
White and his partner Amelia Neate see the snake move once the lettuce is unpacked on the kitchen table. They also noticed that the plastic packaging was torn and that the hose could escape. Therefore, they quickly filled the reptile with the lettuce in a plastic container. White calls the WIRES rescue organization and a snake handler takes the snake away that evening. Before the handler arrived, White said WIRES explained to him, “If you get bitten, you have to go to the hospital very quickly.” ALDI investigates how a snake could get into a supermarket.
(Read more snake stories.)