Though he probably hoped for horsepower under the hood of his new car, a B.C. man instead ended up with a four-foot snake hiding in his glove box.
Ray Kahn, from Langley, B.C., purchased a used Volvo S60 from a Vancouver-area dealership last week. He was set to drive to work Monday morning when the unexpected passenger appeared.
“It was pretty large and it was coiled up,” said Kahn. “So I reached over and I kind of jumped out of the car.”
Kahn said he tried to poke the snake out of the vehicle with a stick, but his efforts caused the reptile refuge to go back into hiding.
“It just climbed right back in to behind my dashboard.”
Kahn called in animal expert Mike Hopcraft, an Abbotsford pro known as “The Reptile Guy,” to lure out the stowaway.
The yellow-brown scales shed throughout the car originally had Hopcraft thinking it was a corn snake, though it took a considerable amount of time to locate more than just the animal’s skin.
“Harmless snake, not venomous or anything like that, but still a little unnerving when you’re not expecting it to be there,” Hopcraft said. “And you don’t want it popping out when you’re driving down the road.”
After a lengthy rescue mission, the cold-blooded creature was drawn out of the car with a heat lamp late Monday night.
The nocturnal snake – which turned out to be a ball python – was as non-venomous as Hopcraft had hoped.
