Venomous creature found curled up in bananas at New Hampshire grocery store. See it
Workers at a New Hampshire grocery store found a venomous stowaway in a shipment of bananas, wildlife officials said.
A conservation officer with the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department responded Feb. 15 to a Market Basket in Manchester after employees found an ornate cat-eyed snake curled up among the fruit, according to the department and local news outlet WMUR.
The “mildly venomous” snake species is native to Ecuador, officials said.
“We’ve had a few calls about pet surrenders of ball pythons and stuff like that, but never, never a venomous snake,” conservation officer Griffin McKeown told WMUR. “That’s definitely a first for me,” he said.
The 2-foot-long “unwanted hitchhiker” was unharmed and rehomed with an animal rescue organization called Rainforest Reptile Shows Inc., the department said.
One commenter said the tiny snake “must be so mad to be here in the cold.”
Ecuador is the second-largest banana import market in the United States, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity.
Manchester is about a 20-mile drive south from Concord.
This story was originally published February 17, 2025 at 8:09 AM with the headline "Venomous creature found curled up in bananas at New Hampshire grocery store. See it."
