Without anyone seeing, 63-year-old Neville Linton snatched it up and brought the lizard home with a bag of vegetables.
Industrial cleaner Neville was shocked by what he observed.
It was just terrible. “I’m not good with snakes,” he said. If I had just left the broccoli outdoors in the kitchen, it would have been flying everywhere in the house.
“That would have been a huge risk for us, with two vulnerable people living here.”
When he realized it was too big to be a caterpillar, he called his sister Ann-Marie Tenkanemin for help, and she identified it as a snake.
The two went back to the Aldi on Dudley Road, where Neville had made the purchase, after popping it in a tub.
When I watched it move, I realized she wasn’t exaggerating, even if I had initially thought otherwise. “The guy in the shop was pretty scared too,” he remarked.
Experts determined that the snake, once it was transported to the nearby zoo, was a juvenile ladder snake.
Herpetologist Dr. Steven J. R. Allain thinks it might be a viperine water snake.
After being taken to the Dudley Zoo, the reptile’s caretakers believe it to be a young ladder snake. However, he tends to differ, according to Dr. Steven J. R. Allain, who bored panda contacted.
Allain said, “I’m not sure the zoo identified the species correctly after looking at the [real] picture of the snake in the broccoli.” The expert concluded that the snake was likely a harmless viperine water snake (Natrix maura), which is prevalent in southern Europe and northern Africa and feeds on fish.
Allain graduated from Anglia Ruskin University with a degree in zoology, Imperial College London awarded her a master’s degree, and she is currently enrolled in the University of Kent’s Ph.D. program. His current areas of interest are the population ecology of barred grass snakes (Natrix helvetica) and the effects of ophidiomycosis, although he is also interested in amphibian sickness as well.
Considering how much food is farmed and imported into the United Kingdom from the Mediterranean region, it is not unusual to find a species from this region appearing in some veggies that are likely grown there. My guess is that the snake was crossing the field at the time, got tangled up in farm equipment, and then went to hide in the broccoli.
The journey to the UK and Neville’s home took some time, but Allain claims that these snakes can go for several months without food, and the refrigerator’s cooling effect would have assisted the snake in maintaining a low metabolism, which reduces the amount of energy needed by the body.
“However, it couldn’t have been cozy,” he went on. “Especially with the sudden shift from the warm Mediterranean climate to a colder environment, to keep the broccoli fresh.”
“Frogs and fish are the only animals that are threatened by venomous water snakes.” They are supposed to be non-venomous to humans and, as a sort of protection, would much rather seem dead than bite.
“I recognize that Neville was going through a trying time at the time (especially since he is afraid of snakes), but if there had been more public education about snakes and how to handle situations like these, his response could have been more positive,” Allain said. “Even though the snake shouldn’t have ended up where it did, perhaps its new home at Dudley Zoo will help alleviate people’s fear of snakes.”
Neville is attempting to receive payment for going through all of this.
Neville is trying to get more money, even though he has already received some.
The father of three argued that, considering the risk to his fragile mother-in-law and his disabled son who share a roof, the amount he had heard didn’t seem reasonable.
He said, “It’s just not good enough.” If it had gotten into the house, there would have been dire repercussions for us. There’s also the emotional fallout from my fear of snakes.
An Aldi official stated, “Our supplier has never had a complaint of this nature and has robust processes in place to prevent such issues from occurring.”
“While we investigate this isolated incident, we sincerely apologize to Mr. Linton for not upholding our customary high standards.”
Once the story was reported in the local news, people’s reactions to it differed.
