Police are searching for a brazen thief who was filmed putting a python down his pants and walking away from a pet store in Michigan. Surveillance footage from the I Love My Pets store in Rockwood captured the suspect putting his hand into a tank and pulling out the 4-foot snake before nonchalantly putting it inside his pants.
According to employees at the store, the python named Pasta, had been adopted and was waiting to be picked up by its new owners on the same day it was stolen.
"I've been here a long time, like four years, and I've never had anyone steal an animal," Emily Scheiwe, an employee at I Love My Pets who shared the surveillance footage on Facebook, told WDIV. "Especially a 4-foot, girthy python."
Scheiwe said she and the other employees were shocked when they rewatched the surveillance footage after noticing Pasta had gone missing, thinking it somehow escaped on its own.
"The first time we watched, I was like, 'No, that didn't happen,'" Scheiwe said. "I was like, 'Play it back.' We had to watch it a couple of times before we were like, 'Oh, my God, he just put it in his pants.'"
Amazingly, the man did not even leave the store straight away after putting the snake in his pants. Instead, he continued to walk around the store for around four minutes and even went to the till to purchase a $6 pet rat.
"I wish it would've bit him," Scheiwe said. "I think that it would've made for a much better video if it would've bit him."
Callie McElroy, who also works at the store, told WXYZ. "The last thing we were expecting was to check the video and take a closer look and see a man putting it down the front of his pants, we were not expecting that at all. We couldn't fathom the way someone could sneak a snake that big out of a store like that."
Scheiwe said that the snake has still has not been found. "If anyone knows this man and is afraid of coming forward and being identified, we will not share their name with anyone," she told Newsweek. "We just hope for the safe return of Pasta, and hope he is not being harmed in any way."
Rockwood Police are asking who recognizes the suspect to contact the department at 734-379-5323.
