Also known as: "The Snake in the Coat," "The Snake at Kmart," "The Snake in the Mattress," etc.
As told by Jennifer...
I heard this one from a friend of mine last week...
Apparently a woman entered the emergency room one day with an inflamed neck, which was an allergic reaction from a snake bite. The woman had no idea where she had received the bite and could only recall feeling a sharp pain in her neck when she wore her new winter coat the previous day.
Well, they checked out her coat, which was made in some South American country, and found a snake sewn inside the lining. The snake may have been trapped in the coat, but it had managed to bite the woman through the material.
Another variation of this story involves a mattress. A young couple purchased a new mattress for their bed, but when it arrived it seemed lumpy. After the first night the couple decided the mattress was awful and returned it to the retailer. The store couldn't figure out why it was so lumpy so they tore the mattress apart. When, during production in yet another South American country, a live anaconda was accidentally sewn in the mattress, and that is what the couple slept on.
As told by Nancy...
I remember back in the late 1970s in my hometown (El Cajon, CA, just east of San Diego), a "true" story circulated that is a classic urban legend. My mother worked at a hospital and apparently this happened to the wife of a police officer who occasionally came to the emergency room with injured criminal suspects.
The woman was shopping for coats at Kmart and when she put her hand in one of the pockets she felt a sharp prick and noticed blood on her finger. She figured it was just a loose pin in the garment and didn't think twice about it. Well, she soon became very ill and was rushed to the hospital where it was discovered she had been bitten on the finger by a snake!
Sure enough, the coat was retrieved from Kmart and there was a live snake in the lining. Naturally, the coat had been manufactured in some "sinister" Asian country. Kmart didn't want the news to be made public so they settled financially with the woman and it was all hushed up.
Of course, the urban legend lived on.
As told by Mary...
A woman bought a coat at Target, took it home, tried it on and felt something bite her. Turned out the coat was made overseas and a snake was sewn into the lining.
My husband told me this story and I laughed and laughed, because I hear the same story about 25 years later, only this time the coat is from KMart!
Comments: Like "The Mexican Pet," "The Exploding Cactus," and similar legends involving frightful things from foreign lands, "The Snake in the Store" is at least partly an expression of xenophobia -- fear of foreigners. More specifically, this legend betrays a deep mistrust of cheaply manufactured imported goods of the sort typically sold in large department stores or "box stores" such as Kmart. This suggests, as folklorist Gary Alan Fine noted in Manufacturing Tales: Sex and Money in Contemporary Legends (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992), that the true underlying theme may be the economic threat of overseas competition.
That having been said, it's not as if anyone is actually fretting about the global economy when they tell this visceral tale. We react to it as we would to any "horrible infestation" -- with fear and revulsion.
