Not the kind of memento we would want to bring back from a trip abroad, and to give her due, the woman in this story did not plan to bring the snake home either.
We are totally freaking out and the question on our mind, though, is how did snake escape custom?
So this Scottish lady, going by the name of Moira Boxall, visited Australia to see her daughter and son-in-law and brought back more than she bargained for – a snake, a python to be precise.
The snake was hiding in one of her shoes, obviously not the one she was wearing, but inside her luggage where it avoided detection and shed its skin during the 9,000-mile flight.
According to her son-in-law, the lady had thought she had seen a snake in her room prior to leaving Australia but could not find anything after searching for it and so had continued with her packing, reports NBC News. It wasn’t until Boxall arrived back at her home in Glasgow, Scotland and started to unpack that she made the startling find.
The snake is currently in quarantine at the Scottish SPCA animal rescue centre in Edinburgh.Scottish SPCA
“She was not at all expecting to find the snake when she was unpacking,” Airlie, her son-in-law says.
Boxall thought the snake was a fake and assumed her son-in-law and her daughter, Sarah, had placed it in her shoe as a joke. But she quickly realized it wasn’t a prank when the reptile started to move when she poked it.
Thankfully, the snake that had slithered into her shoe was a spotted python, which isn’t poisonous. According to the Australia Zoo, the spotted python, one of the country’s smallest snakes, grows to a length of more than 4 feet, and is often found living in shrubs and woodlands and near caves along the coast.
While the snake didn’t pose a threat to Boxall, Airlie said his mother-in-law is hesitant to return to Australia. (Side note: we too would be.)
“We had to get a friend to go and unpack the rest of the bag for her in case there was another one,” he says.
“She said she’s not so keen to come back and visit, but I suspect she will — she’ll have to think about it at first.”
The python was quarantined in Scotland and is expected to be taken to a zoo in Glasgow, according to ABC Australia.
