Snake pops up from under family’s car bonnet during country drive

Imagine taking the family out for a country drive only to come face-to-face with a baby snake through the car windscreen.

When a snake popped up from under the car bonnet during a country drive yesterday, Georgia Riggs, 18, of Lower Inman Valley near Victor Harbor couldn’t believe her eyes.

“Mum was driving and I was in the passenger seat and I just remember looking like directly in front of me and thinking, I don’t remember having a radio antenna on the outside of our car,” she said.

“Then I saw a little forked tongue, waving in the breeze. I said to Mum: ‘Is that a snake on our car?’ And then it disappeared, so we closed all the air vents. And then it came up on mum’s side, and we just pulled over.”

The little red-bellied black snake, visible through the front windscreen. Picture: Georgia Riggs

An arrow points to where the little red-bellied black snake popped its head up from under the bonnet. Picture: Georgia Riggs

Steve Brown from Snake Catchers Adelaide searches the car for the snake. Picture: Georgia Riggs

Despite poor phone reception, they called Snake Catchers Adelaide, who sent someone straight away.

The catcher, Steve Brown, searched under the car bonnet for at least 20 minutes with no success and went to leave empty-handed, when Ms Riggs almost stepped on it getting back into the car.

“Everyone else got in the other side of the car and my passenger side was parked in the scrub, so I went around and opened the passenger door, went to step in and looked down and there it is. There‘s the snake,” Ms Riggs said.

“I screamed. I reckon it was about a foot away from my foot. I was wearing my open toed sandals. And it was just there very much alive.”

Steve Brown from Snake Catchers Adelaide bags the snake. Picture: Georgia Riggs

Under direction from the mum and her three kids, Mr Brown scrambled to grab the snake as it tried to crawl away, from one end of the car to other, finally bagging the small red-bellied black snake.

Ms Riggs said she thought the snake may have climbed on to the car when she was parked at work at Aldinga for five hours that morning, before picking up her mum and three siblings and heading back to staff drinks. Coastal areas area a haven for snakes, but then, so are rural areas.

“What an adventure. Wow, really. We went to staff drinks and it was a great tale to tell,” Ms Riggs said.

“Now we’re all a little bit frightened, we haven’t driven that car again since, we’re going to go get it cleaned out because it feels really weird.”

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