A Sunshine Coast motorist possibly drove for hours with a venomous snake slithering around in her car.
Snake catcher Dan Busstra, alias Snake Catcher Dan, was called to remove the red-bellied black from the woman’s parked vehicle at Palmwoods last week.
“She gave me a call. She was about to get in the car and her friend looked down and saw the snake underneath the seat,” he said.
“They weren’t sure what it was. They took a photo and I thought, ‘That’s a snake down there’.”
The two kept an eye on the car and snake until Dan arrived.
“As soon as I rocked up, they said it might have gone from underneath the seat to the back seat,” he said.
“I got my bag and hook ready and as soon as I opened up the door the snake was exactly where she said it was going to be.”
Dan swooped in and grabbed the snake by the tail in one clean movement as it tried to retreat from the back passenger footwell to its hiding place under the front passenger seat.
He carefully pulled it out of the car, showing it to the car owner and her friend before bagging it for release elsewhere.
The vehicle owner said she had been driving for about three hours before the snake showed itself.
Dan said the motorist was lucky that the snake was a red-bellied black rather than another species.
“The red-bellies aren’t as quick to bite as the browns,” he said.
Dan said it was not known how the snake, which he estimated to be 70cm long and two or three years old, got into the vehicle.
“There’s no 100 per cent certain way of saying how it got into the car. I’m not a mechanic but I’ve spoken to people and they say there’s no way that it could get in from underneath the car. If there were gaps and open vents, there’d be dirt and dust everywhere,” he said.
Dan said that given the size of the snake, it was unlikely to have been able to make its own way in off the ground.
He speculated that it may have managed to stow away in a bag or similar item loaded into the car at some stage.
