Helaina Alati, 25, was quietly shopping in the spice section when a snake suddenly crawled off the shelves: “I turned my head and it was about 20cm from my face, looking straight at me,” she told BBC News. Alati knew right away from her experience as a volunteer snake-hunting that the animal was not dangerous: “He was looking straight at me the whole time, as if to say, ‘Can you take me outside please?'”
After photographing the snake, Lati warned the store staff. Close the area “quickly and quietly” to other customers.
(Read more below the video.)
Meanwhile, my machine came home to bring a “snake bag”. At the grocery store, “the snake pecked its tail, causing it to slide right into the bag.” “It was cold and not aggressive at all,” she told the Guardian. “I am lucky that I was the one who discovered this animal. Most people would panic.”
The woman then released the reptiles back into the wild in Sydney, which is a natural habitat for snakes: “Honestly, this is the most exciting thing that has happened in such a short time. The staff were taking pictures all the time,” said El Lati.
Australia’s largest city has been on lockdown since June to fight a delta-variable outbreak. Grocery shopping is one of the few reasons people are allowed to leave their homes.
Snakes are not poisonous to humans, but they can cause a painful sting.
