A couple of thieves walked into a Florida pet store in the middle of the day, stuffed some boa constrictors into their hoodies, and walked out.
The total value of the stolen snakes came to $8,000.
According to the Manatee County Sheriff's Office, the hoodie thieves walked out of the Petland Bradenton on Monday afternoon with a total of six snakes, including a four-foot, red-tailed boa constrictor.
The theft went down during business hours while the manager was working the register and a clerk was helping a customer.
At first, the store owners didn't report the theft because they usually keep the habitat where the snakes live unlocked and thought maybe they just slithered out. Also, and more important, who the hell is going to walk into a store in broad daylight and grab a bunch of snakes?
Still, after they noticed the snakes were nowhere to be found, the store owners took a gander at surveillance footage and, sure enough, they saw two men and a woman grabbing the snakes and walking out.
Surveillance showed the two men removing the unlocked latches from the snake habitats and grabbing the animals, while the woman served as a lookout.
The footage also shows one of the thieves stuffing the boa constrictor into a hoodie and then putting the hoodie around his neck. Because the very best place to put a possibly aggravated boa constrictor is around your neck!
One of the men also grabbed some hatchlings, wrapping them in a hoodie as well.
Crazier still was that the men were just grabbing snakes willy-nilly, not caring that they were, you know, grabbing snakes.
"It was so brazen of this man to stick his hand in to get a snake he didn't know," a store owner told WPTV. "I deal with snakes every day, and I would never do something like that."
The store owner also says some hatchings went missing from the store a several weeks ago.
Police are still investigating.
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