Snakes are just straight-up creepy, and they freak out most of us. There’s just something we don’t trust about a creature that doesn’t blink or have what we would call “bones,” but who does have a long, often-forked tongue that silently slithers about en route to eat a mouse whole, or bite us and fill our bodies with venom. Snakes are so universally unsettling that owning one as a pet is a notable trait. For better or for worse, if you own a slithery snake, you become “the snake guy.” And this is all to say nothing of how the snake is the very appropriate symbol of Slytherin, the most nefarious house in all of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Fortunately for non-fans of snakes, one doesn’t encounter too many snakes on a daily basis. Spider in the bathroom? Sure. But a snake crossing your path? It just doesn’t happen if you live in a big city…in America. Australia is another matter entirely. Snakes are all over the place Down Under, and something to look out for, but they still don’t usually, say, hang out under cars.
A guy named Ted Ogier was making a delivery run in the town of Eden, New South Wales, when he suddenly noticed a snake crawl out from under his car’s bonnet (Australian for “hood”) and wrap itself around the driver’s side rearview mirror. It wanted to go further—as in inside the car, where it was warm—but fortunately for Ogier and your dreams tonight, the window was closed. “It was sort of tapping on the window a couple of times, because it obviously wanted to get in,” Ogier told Australia’s ABC News.
The slimy carjacker was a red-bellied black snake, so named because it has black, scaly skin and a red underside. And yes, it’s a venomous breed, but they generally don’t bite unless provoked. Nevertheless, it was eight feet long. Ogier called a co-worker at his employer, an auto parts store, who came out to the car with the latest in snake removal technology: a broom to nudge it off with.
The post went viral, and people on social media were understandably spooked.