A 63-year-old man from Birmingham, UK, got a shocking surprise from a routine grocery trip. Neville Linton bought a bag of broccoli from Aldi, only to find a live snake curled inside three days later. “I’m not good with snakes,” he said. “It was pretty frightening. It’s lucky I didn’t just leave the broccoli out in the kitchen—it could’ve been loose in the house.”

His sister, Ann-Marie Tenkanemin, helped trap the snake in a tub and return it to the store, where the manager was startled to see it moving. Linton and his son later took it to Dudley Zoo, where experts identified it as a young ladder snake — non-venomous but capable of biting.

Herpetologist Dr. Steven Allain suggested it might actually have been a viperine water snake, a harmless Mediterranean species “probably scooped up by agricultural equipment” during harvesting.

Aldi apologized and launched an investigation, stressing customer safety. Linton, however, worried about his disabled son and elderly mother-in-law, saying things could have ended much worse.

The snake now lives safely at the zoo — a chilling reminder that even everyday groceries can sometimes carry wild surprises.