Usually, the most thrilling creature you might anticipate finding amongst your groceries is perhaps a spider, but that's already pushing it. However, fate had different plans for an unlucky shopper at Aldi. As he unpacked his groceries at home, he discovered an entire ladder snake snuggled up inside his broccoli.
From Fox News:
A grandfather received a scare when he opened a bag of broccoli — and found a live snaketucked inside it.
Neville Linton, 63, said discovering the young ladder snake, which is capable of a nasty bite, was a "frightening" experience, as SWNS, the British news service, reported of the incident.
He said he bought the broccoli from an Aldi branch in Stourbridge, West Midlands, in the U.K., on June 2.
He put it in the refrigerator before taking it out to prepare a meal three days later, he told SWNS.
Linton, who works in industrial cleaning, said he's afraid of snakes — so relatives jumped to his aid and scooped up the reptile.
Said Linton, a grandfather of one from Birmingham, "It was pretty frightening. I'm not good with snakes."
He added, "It's lucky I didn't just leave the broccoli out in the kitchen, or it would have been loose in the house. That would have been a huge risk for us because we have two vulnerable people living here."
Honestly, it's mind-boggling that the snake managed to survive being trapped in plastic and confined to a refrigerator for days. I mean, who would have thought?
But seriously, how did nobody along the entire supply chain, from the farm to the store, notice such a sizable creature hitching a ride on the broccoli?
It seems like we have an excess of automated systems handling our food these days. Maybe it's time to reconsider the role of human inspection in ensuring our produce is critter-free.
