Driver Shocked by Corn Snake Slithering Across Car Dashboard

A man delivering a car from a dealership recently spotted a corn snake hanging from the car's dashboard that kept slithering throughout the vehicle to avoid being captured.

The man was delivering the vehicle from a car dealership in Tipton, an England town in the West Midlands, to a customer in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, when he found the snake, according to Yahoo! News on Saturday. The driver stopped at a service station near Willington and called the Linjoy Wildlife Sanctuary and Rescue to remove the non-venomous snake from the car, the sanctuary said on its Facebook.

The snake catcher who arrived at the scene tried to grab the snake, but it slithered off under the seat, which was attached to the frame of the car and had a hole that the reptile hid under, Lindsay Newell, who runs the sanctuary, told Yahoo! News.

"We put a phone camera against the trim and we could just see its scales in the mid-section of the car. It wasn't happy," Newell said. "At this point it was trying to get away, still trying to slither off to get further in."

The car seat had to be removed, along with the carpet, plastic trims, and the passenger side seat, to get to the snake as it ended up inside the interior and wrapped itself around the electrical looms, according to the sanctuary's statement on Facebook.

"With me securing the tail end and mid section, Mark [the snake catcher] finally got to the head (tried to bite him) and the snake was encouraged out. Everything was put back in place and secured again and the gentleman was able to continue his journey," read the sanctuary's post, adding that the snake was "very cold" when it was captured as it must have been in there for a few days, but is now "more active."

Newsweek reached out by email to the Linjoy Wildlife Sanctuary and Rescue for additional information and comment.

It's not uncommon for snakes to hide in different areas inside cars including under passenger seats. A similar instance happened last month in Virginia where a ball python was found in the passenger side of a U-Haul rental truck. The U-Haul rental company manager called the Virginia Wildlife Management and Control to remove the snake.

"It is also not a native snake here in Virginia and it's unknown how it got there," Richard Perry, owner of Virginia Wildlife Management and Control, told Newsweek last month. "The company reached out to the previous drivers and they had absolutely no idea of it being there nor how it got there, which makes it so mysterious."

The ball pathos, also known as the royal pythons, are native to West and Central Africa, which prompted Perry to believe that the snake was a pet whose owner abandoned it or "it got loose somewhere and found its way into the truck."

Meanwhile, a man in Hervey Bay, Australia, found a 6-foot python beneath his car hood while he was fixing his vehicle and checking the car battery earlier this month.

"The snake probably thought it seemed like a nice warm and secure spot to have a sleep," Drew Godfrey of Hervey Bay Snake Catchers told Newsweek at the time. He said the man had gone to check the car battery.

"He was very surprised but not frightened, as this species is nonvenomous," the snake catcher said.

Coastal carpet pythons, a subspecies of the carpet python, are mostly found along the east coast of Australia. It's very common to find them in Hervey Bay, a coastal city in the southern state of Queensland, according to Godfrey.