When security goes too far

I stumbled across this article on Yahoo News, and it appears that Harrods, a very popular London store, is going to great security lengths in order to guard a pair of jewel-encrusted sandals: they're having the counter guarded by a live cobra!

Now I've heard of outsourcing, but isn't this a little ridiculous? Plus, I can't see a lot of people (especially those afraid of snakes) actually wanting to buy those shoes once they've been in the presence of a deadly snake.