New York woman finds snake wrapped around shopping cart

Credit: Bruno Vincent

Credit: Bruno Vincent

A woman shopping at a western New York supermarket Monday got a surprise while browsing in the produce department.

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Laura Walitsky was alerted by her daughter that a snake was wrapped around her cart in a Wegman's supermarket in Pittsford, WROC reported.

In a Facebook post that she has since removed, Walitsky said her daughter told her, “Uh, Mom, there’s a snake on the cart,” the television station reported.

Walitsky did not panic. She said she grew up around snakes and knew this particular reptile, which was wrapped around the bottom of the shopping cart, was not poisonous, WHAM reported.

"People would’ve freaked out, it’s hard to catch snakes when they’re on hard surfaces and moving fast," she told the television station.

According to the Seneca Park Zoo in Rochester, the snake is an eastern milk snake, a harmless constrictor that eats small mammals and other snakes.

New York is home to only three venomous snake species—timber rattlesnakeeastern Massasauga rattlesnake, and northern copperhead—but all are very rare.

After discovering the snake, Walitsky pushed the cart outside and notified one of the Helping Hands employee at the supermarket.

"Funniest line from the Helping Hands guy when a woman passing by asked if we thought it was from around here,” Walitsky wrote on Facebook. “'Well, we get most of our produce locally,' the man said."

"This is above my pay grade," employee Joshua Atwell told WHAM while laughing.

Wegmans manager Sarah DePeters told the television station that she could not believe what happened.

"We do not have official snake removal training, but we might need to add that to the manual now," DePeters told WHAM.

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