Snake on plane

Found this to be a little interesting…

BROOKHAVEN, Miss. (AP) – It was no movie moment when a physician, flying himself across Mississippi in a one-seat plane, discovered a stowaway - a gray rat snake.

Dr. Ed Carruth discovered the snake-on-a-plane when it began “licking” his arm Thursday, he told The Daily Leader of Brookhaven.

“I’ve been flying planes for 50 years and over 14,000 hours, and this is the most unusual in-flight emergency I’ve encountered,” he said. “I guess it wasn’t exactly an emergency, but I did almost hurt myself when I saw it.”

Needing to fly the plane and lacking tools to get rid of the snake, “I did some aerobatics,” Carruth said. “And once he got oriented, he went to the back of the plane.”

When Carruth arrived at Brookhaven Municipal Airport after his flight from Meridian, officials called a snake expert to remove the reptile. It’s not uncommon for snakes to live in airplane hangars, said Joey Pradillo, the expert.

“The snakes are in there after the mice. And the hangar is cool on the inside, and that’s why he was in there in the first place,” he said. Pradillo released the snake into the wild.

I would have crashed and died.

http://www.savelakemartin.com/gray_rat_quickster.jpg

Ya, that would have killed me. Heart failure before I got to the ground.

Pilot got lucky, as that kind of snake, while not poisonous has a rep for being very aggressive. Maybe it was lulled to calmness by flying? :smiley:

This type a snake is a dime a dozen down this a way. Some are big enough where you don’t want to run over them for fear of front end alignment issues after doing that deed.

Yep, my heart would’ve definitely stopped beating if i looked down to discover that thing was “licking” my arm. :open_mouth: