Occurred on January 3, 2017 / Mundoo Island, Australia
Info: "I was driving from Adelaide to our Mundoo Island home to our cattle station from a day in the city with my 14 year old daughter and was about an hour from our island when a snake popped up out of my bonnet, right in front of me. I was frightened out of my wits. I swore, which startled my daughter more than the snake did! I was travelling at 100km/h so had to make many important decisions in a split second. After a couple of minutes I called my husband, who is a farmer, and asked his advice. He laughed at me but when he heard the tone of my voice he decided I was telling the truth and took my news seriously! I asked him to call the dealer from whom we had bought the car to find out how we could stop the snake from moving from the engine well into the actual interior of the car. My husband called me back and said to shut all the vents and turn the air conditioner onto recirculate. He also suggested that I continue on homewards - an hour away! My daughter sat with her legs crossed on her front seat and kept checking around my legs on the accelerator using the torch on her phone. The snake popped his head and about 4 inches of his body out every 15 minutes or so. As much as it frightened me each time he did it I was given comfort that he was still under the bonnet and not trying to get into the interior of the car. It was a terrifying hour's drive and when I finally reached our island home I parked the car in the middle of a paddock, turned the engine off, hopped out and watched with horror as my husband lifted the bonnet and grabbed the snake by the tail to pull it out. The snake was too strong and buried himself deeper in the engine well. I quietly suggested that we shut the bonnet and assess it in the morning - which we did. In the morning my husband lifted the bonnet and the snake was up on top of the engine. I photographed him and then he slid back down into the engine again. There are so many black pipes in new cars that it makes it really difficult to see where he is. We will have another look in the morning. My car is still in the middle of the paddock! I have many snake encounters on our cattle station, in fact I trod on a Tiger snake only 4 weeks ago whilst hooking up a trailer to my car, but the snake in my bonnet was totally unexpected and frightened the living daylights out of me!"
