A Florida man hoping to win a snake in a pet store contest puked and died after eating dozens of live cockroaches and worms.
Police said Archbold ‘wasn’t feeling well and began to regurgitate” shortly after the contest ended, reports The Smoking Gun. He was pronounced dead at an area hospital and police are still waiting for autopsy results to see if the insects killed the man or if it was something else.
The reptile store held the roach-eating contest as part of its Midnight Madness store, giving contestants four minutes to eat the most discoid roaches, which grow up to three inches long.
To be fair, the store did warn on its Facebook page – where it sells reptiles to the highest bidders – that “any vomiting is an automatic DQ,” but since Archbold held the critters down until the contest ended, he won the python. The snake is being held in his name and his relatives can claim it if they want it, the store said.
The reptile store, in a Facebook update Sunday, said they liked Eddie right away.
Although we just met Eddie the night of the sale, we all liked him right away. All of us here at Ben Siegel Reptiles are sad that we will not get to know Eddie better, for in the short time we knew him, he was very well liked by all.