Family road trip goes off the rails after dad makes shocking find in air conditioning vent: ‘Everyone started freaking out’
An Australian family has had their road trip brought to a screeching halt after spotting something unusual lurking behind the dashboard airconditioning vent.
The dad and his family were traveling along this week when he got the fright of his life.
The dad “all of a sudden jumped” and quickly pulled over, telling the kids: “I think there’s a snake in the car, and it just tried to bite me,” his daughter, Lilly Divine, told Channel 7.
The family got out of the car and waited for about five minutes before the snake reared its head.
“Everyone started freaking out,” Ms. Divine said
“We saw it come out of the vent, but it moved somewhere else in the car we couldn’t get to.”
The snake disappeared from sight and the family was forced to sit in the car with it for the 20-minute drive back home.
“We left one of the car windows open overnight, hoping it would leave,” Ms Divine said.
“By morning it was gone.”
The family believes it was a common tree snake, about a metre in length, that had got into the car through a door that was left open overnight.
The snakes are common in large parts of Australia and Papua New Guinea. They don’t have venom and aren’t dangerous to humans, relying instead on their sharp teeth to kill and eat prey — usually fish, frogs and other small animals.
A quick online search shows the find isn’t unprecedented. Footage from Sunshine Coast Snake Catchers taken in 2021 shows another, much smaller tree snake curled up in the exact same spot inside another car.
