A very strange incident unfolded yesterday morning in an Aldi supermarket in Chicago. To shoppers and workers’ surprise, a coyote was discovered hiding deep within the produce cooler. While the wild animal was safely removed, and no one was thankfully hurt, footage of the bizarre disturbance was caught on camera by a passerby and shared to social media.
In the 28-second video clip, a police officer holding an extended grabber can be seen stooped over a produce cooler, alongside an Aldi worker equipped with a trolley and broom. Both men bear puzzled looks on their faces and are looking intently at the fridge area. The police officer can be seen poking something inside the cooler, but for the first few moments, it remains a mystery as to what it actually is. After a few pokes, the officer bends down and leans into the fridge and grabs something that appears to be the furry grey tail of an animal. You can hear in the background, onlookers express concern saying: “Watch out, watch out!“
After a few powerful tugs, the animal comes free and is revealed to be an adult coyote. Confused and scared, the prairie wolf skitters about on the slippery supermarket floor for a few moments before diving right back into the produce cooler that it was nestled in. The footage ends with the officer leaning back down and attempting to retrieve the coyote again from the refrigerator.
With the bizarre clip making the rounds across various social media platforms — like X, Reddit, and Facebook — reactions to the footage have largely been comical in nature. Many compared the Aldi coyote to the famous Looney Tunes animated character Wile E. Coyote, with one Redditor penning:
Please PLEASE tell me it was an ACME
rarehighfives
To this, a commenter simply responded with, “ALDI not ACME.”
Elsewhere, another netizen chimed in sensibly with, “Always rinse your fruit and vegetables“.
Fortunately, the coyote wasn’t visibly hurt by the incident and officials say, via ABC7Chicago, that the animal will be safely transferred to a local wildlife preserve, Creek Wildlife Rehabilitation. Still, it remains unclear how the animal managed to get into the supermarket fridge in the first place. Suffice it to say, it was far from an average day for said Aldi workers and shoppers.
