Imagine it’s just a normal day, and you quickly pop out to your local newsagent to grab a drink or snack.
Then you spot another customer… holding a snake.
It sounds like something out of a book or nightmare, but this was actually a reality for Liverpool resident Alwyn Maynard last week.
The 52-year-old popped into a shop in Tuebrook on Tuesday and was met with absolutely ridiculous scenes – a woman casually wandering around with her pet snake wrapped around her neck.
Alwyn asked if he could take a video, and as he started filming the snake stretched towards the shop counter. He believes it was a boa constrictor.
A newsagent worker, who is clearly terrified, is heard screaming in the background and begging the woman to leave.
Alwyn, who is heard laughing hysterically behind the camera, said: ‘I just felt so sorry for the shopkeeper.
‘She must have had a bad experience with a snake as a young child because she was absolutely terrified. All hell broke loose.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard screams like that. Every time she screamed it was an octave higher. She must have felt trapped.
‘They probably dealt with people trying to rob them, but all that pales into insignificance with this. It is a bit different from a snake trying to steal from your shop.
‘Why would you bring a six-feet snake to the local shop? You’d just leave it at home. I don’t think she will bring it to a shop again.’
Footage shows the snake wrapping itself around a box of mints ‘as if it’s stealing then for its sweet tooth’, knocking several others onto the floor, and climbing onto the till.
Its unfazed owner tries to wrestle it back onto her shoulders with little success – and another customer is seen leaving the shop as the chaos unfolds.
The railway station worker, who lives in Hatton Garden, said: ‘She just didn’t seem to know what the snake was doing behind her. It must have had a sweet tooth.
‘She was apologising for knocking the mints on the floor, but not the snake. She just lost control of it. It had a mind of its own.’
The woman is then heard trying to make the snake get off the till by whispering to it ‘hey, missy’ and ‘come on trouble, behave yourself’.
Alwyn joked he didn’t get involved because he ‘didn’t want to be strangled by it’ and said he ‘wasn’t very sympathetic’.
‘That’s how they kill their prey and I didn’t want to be its next victim,’ he said, adding after about three minutes the woman regained control of her animals.
He said he even left without the bottle of water he went in for as a result of the chaos, and expects to see a ‘no pets allowed’ sign in the window after the shop worker was left terrified.
Despite this, he claims it was a ‘really nice-looking creature’. If you say so, Alwyn.
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