Sydney man finds snake in lettuce bought at supermarket

<p>CANBERRA, Australia &mdash; Alex White thought he was watching a huge worm writhing in a plastic-wrapped lettuce he’d just brought home from a Sydney supermarket — until a snake tongue flicked.</p>
<p>“I kind of completely freaked out when I saw this little tongue come out of its mouth and start flicking around and realized it was a snake because worms don’t have tongues,” White said on Thursday.</p>
<p>“I definitely kind of panicked a bit,” he added. </p>
<p>It was a venomous paled-headed snake that authorities say made an 870-kilometer (540-mile) journey to Sydney from a Toowoomba packing plant wrapped in plastic with a pair of cos lettuces.</p>
<p>The refrigerated supermarket supply chain likely lulled the cold-blooded juvenile into a stupor until White bought the lettuces at an inner-city ALDI supermarket on Monday evening and rode his bicycle home with salad and snake in his backpack.</p>
<p>White and his partner Amelia Neate spotted the snake moving as soon as the lettuces were unpacked on to the kitchen table.</p>
<p>They also noticed the plastic wrapping was torn and that the snake could escape, so they quickly stuffed the reptile with the lettuces into a plastic food storage container. </p>
<p>White phoned the WIRES rescue organization and a snake handler took the snake away that night.</p>
<p>Before the handler arrived, White said WIRES had explained to him: “If you get bitten, you’ve got to go to hospital really quickly.”</p>
<p>ALDI is investigating how a snake could have found its way into a supermarket.</p>
<p>“We’ve worked with the customer and the team at WIRES to identify the snake’s natural habitat, which is certainly not an ALDI store!” the German-based supermarket chain said in a statement.</p>
<p>“We are working closely with our produce supplier to investigate how this incident could have possibly occurred,” ALDI said. </p>
<p>WIRES reptile coordinator Gary Pattinson said while the snake was less than 20 centimeters (8 inches) long, it was “as venomous as it will ever be.”</p>
<p>Pattinson is caring for the snake until it is returned to Queensland state next week, following the WIRES policy of returning rescued wildlife to where it comes from.</p>
<p>“It’s the first snake I’ve ever had in sealed, packed produce,” Pattinson said. “We get frogs in them all the time.”</p>
<p>Neate, a German immigrant, said her brush with a venomous snake in a Sydney kitchen was a setback in her efforts to assure relatives in Europe that Australia’s notoriously deadly Outback wildlife was nothing to worry about.</p>
<p>“For the last 10 years or so, I’ve told my family at home that Australia’s a really safe country,” Neate said.</p>
<p>“I’ve always said I’m just in the city, it’s totally fine here,” she added.</p>