A 63-year-old man, Neville Linton, unknowingly brought home a snake after purchasing broccoli from an Aldi supermarket in Stourbridge, England. Linton, an industrial cleaner, discovered the unexpected guest when unwrapping the broccoli for a meal three days later. He called his sister for help, who identified it as a snake. Linton said, “It’s lucky I didn’t just leave the broccoli out in the kitchen, or it would have been loose in the house.” The reptile, believed by Dudley Zoo staff to be a young ladder snake, was later identified by zoologist Dr. Steven J R Allain as a harmless viperine water snake from southwestern Europe. Allain emphasized that such incidents may occur due to the importation of food from the Mediterranean region.
