Python Hides In Woman's Suitcase, Travels From Australia To Scotland On Aircraft

A Scottish woman was surprised while unpacking after a vacation when she found a python in her luggage. Moira Boxall spotted the reptile curled up in her shoe after a 9,000-mile flight from Australia.

Boxall revealed in an interview with local media that she initially thought it was a toy snake placed in her luggage as a joke. When the snake moved, she realized it was alive.

“She actually thought that Sarah [daughter] and I had put a fake snake in her shoe to wind her up, so at first she thought it was a joke until she touched it and it moved,” Boxall's son-in-law told ABC. “She absolutely lost it — it was her first real encounter with a snake.”

Boxall quickly contacted the Scottish RSPCA who arrived at the scene and took the reptile with them.

"I responded to a call from a woman who had just returned from a holiday in Australia who had found a small snake inside her shoe in her suitcase," animal rescue officer Taylor Johnstone said in a statement sent to CNN. "When I arrived, the snake had been contained by the caller, so I safely removed the snake from the property. Upon examination, the snake was found to be a spotted python which is not venomous."

"The snake is now in quarantine at our animal rescue and re-homing centre in Edinburgh," he added.

This is not the first time such an incident took place where a snake managed to make its way inside a passenger's luggage and into a plane. In 2016, a passenger caught a snake on camera dangling down into the cabin from the overhead bin during an Aeromexico flight from Torreon to Mexico City. The plane made a quick landing and animal control took the reptile into custody.