A man went to the grocery store to get food, but instead brought home a snake. He found out this after the snake started getting used to his food. A man named Neville Linton, who is 63 years old, bought a bag of broccoli at an Aldi shop in Stourbridge, England. It was in his fridge for three days before he found the snake when he took it out to cook a meal.
But when the man took the broccoli out of its packaging, he was surprised to see someone he didn’t expect. Don’t forget to read our interview with Dr. Steven J. R. Allain, also known as “The pop-punk herpetologist,” to find out what happened.
In a broccoli field, a snake from the southwest of Europe was found. It was then taken to a store in Britain.
Neville Linton, 63, grabbed it along with a bag of veggies and brought the snake home without realizing it.
Neville was shocked when he saw what he saw. He works as an industrial cleaner.
“It was pretty scary.” “I’m not good with snakes,” he disclosed. “Oops, I should not have left the broccoli out in the kitchen; otherwise it would have been roaming around the house.”
“That was a very big risk for us because there are two weak people living here.”
When he found out it wasn’t a caterpillar, he called his sister Ann-Marie Tenkanemin for help. It was a snake, which she rightly identified. They took the box and went back to the Aldi on Dudley Road where Neville bought it.
For a moment I thought she was kidding, but I pulled away when I saw it start to move. “The guy in the shop was also pretty scared,” he said.
People took the snake to a nearby zoo, where experts confirmed that it was a young ladder snake.
The herpetologist Dr. Steven J. R. Allain thinks it might be a viperine water snake.
After seeing the picture of the snake in the broccoli, Allain said he doesn’t think the zoo correctly named the species. He thinks it might be a viperine water snake, which is a safe species that lives in southwestern Europe and northern Africa and eats fish.
Allain got his bachelor’s degree in biology from Anglia Ruskin University, his master’s degree from Imperial College London, and he is now working on his Ph.D. at the University of Kent. It mainly looks at the population ecology of barred grass snakes and how ophidiomycosis affects them. It also looks at diseases that affect amphibians and their populations.
Given that a lot of the food that is grown and brought into the UK comes from the Mediterranean, it is not surprising to find a species from that area in some veggies that are likely grown there. I think it’s likely that the snake was moving across the field when it was accidently picked up by farm equipment. It then went to hide in the broccoli.
Allain said that these snakes can go for months without food, so the trip to the UK and then to Neville’s house took a while. The fridge’s cold weather would have slowed the snake’s metabolism, making it need less energy.
He also said, “However, I don’t think it would have been comfortable.” “In order to keep the broccoli fresh, especially the quick change from the warm Mediterranean climate to a cooler one.”
“Tropical viperine snakes are only dangerous to fish and frogs.” People think they are not poisonous to people because they don’t bite as a way to defend themselves—they’d rather play dead.
Allain said, “I know this must have been a hard time for Neville, especially since he is afraid of snakes. But his response could have been better if more people knew about snakes and how to handle situations like this.” “The snake wasn’t expecting to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hopefully, its new home at Dudley Zoo will help people get over their fears of snakes.”
Neville wants to get paid for every little thing that’s happened.
Neville got paid, but he wants to try to get a bigger number. He doesn’t think the first offer was fair because it put his crippled son and weak mother-in-law, who both live with him, in danger.
He also said, “It’s just not good enough.” “If it got out in the house, it would have been very bad for us.” I’m also afraid of snakes, which has an emotional effect on me.
A spokesperson for Aldi said, “Our supplier has never had a complaint of this nature and has strong processes in place to stop such problems from happening.”
“This is an isolated incident that we are looking into, and we’re sorry to Mr. Linton that our usual high standards were not met.”
