When a Goodwill employee in Stafford, Virginia started sifting through a box of donated books, that person did not expect to come across a four-foot snake. No one knows how the snake ended up inside the box of donated goods—did someone try to donate it? Did it try to donate itself to a place with air conditioning? Likely, it just slithered into the box at some point.
After discovering the surprising donation, Goodwill called animal control, and Captain J.A. Bice came to the rescue. While reporting the story, the Stafford County Sheriff’s Department couldn’t help but make several Harry Potter jokes, calling the snake a “basilisk” and a “Slytherin suspect.”
“Using his powers of persuasion, and a bit of Parseltongue, Captain Bice was able to safely remove the snake and release it back into the wild,” the sheriff’s office said in its cheeky incident report. “No snakes, employees, or deputies were harmed during the incident.”
Considering Harry Potter destroyed the Basilisk in Chamber of Secrets, we’re assuming this Goodwill snake is actually a northern black racer or maybe an eastern ratsnake. Both species live throughout Virginia, are mostly black, and can grow to be four feet or more.
Thankfully, both species are harmless . . . but a snake is still not something you’d want to stock at the Goodwill.