Australian finds poisonous snake in Aldi lettuce: “After that I washed and ate the lettuce” | Abroad

The beast was almost crawling around the kitchen table, as White and his girlfriend had already torn the sack of lettuce. “I was completely shocked when I saw a little tongue sticking out of his mouth and realized it was a snake,” he said afterwards. “I definitely panicked a bit.”

A coral snake measures less than eight inches but is “as poisonous as it gets,” Australian snake expert Garry Pattinson said of the find. White learned, when he called a nearby animal shelter, that he had to go to hospital “ immediately ” if he or his girlfriend was bitten.

The Sydney couple managed to quickly put the reptile in a Tupperware container. Soon after, the creature was taken away by a snake expert from Wires, an Australian wildlife rescue organization.

According to local authorities, the coral snake accidentally ended up in lettuce at a packing site in Toowoomba, 870 kilometers from Sydney. There the animal was accidentally wrapped tightly with two heads of romaine lettuce. The cold-blooded snake likely fell asleep on the refrigerated transport in Sydney and woke up again when White put the lettuce in his backpack after the purchase and cycled home.

Aldi is figuring out how the animal ended up on the shelves. The snake will remain in an animal shelter in Sydney for the time being and will then be released back into the wild in the state of Queensland, where the animal originated from.

By the way, White ate the lettuce again afterwards – after washing it thoroughly – in an envelope, he later said. The Guardian. “There were a few things that I think were snake poop, but I washed them off.” White confessed that he hadn’t always cleaned his lettuce in the past, but he is now cured. “I think that’s the lesson of it all.”