Found a snake in my Maruti Ignis: How I rescued it & what I learnt

I wondered what to do for 2 minutes. I couldn’t possibly drive away in a car containing a snake.

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A snake in my car:

Yes, guys. It happened to me.

A bit of background. We have a Maruti Suzuki Ignis, which we bought in June 2017 and has clocked in excess of 85,000 km. We live in an independent house with a wide courtyard. We have been living there for the last 11 years. There a busy road right in front. It is a residential locality with a multi-speciality hospital half a km away, yet there are many empty plots thick with plants & trees in a 1 km radius. The MC Road (SH 1) is just half a km away. Although we have neighbours to our south & east, the plots to our north and west are unoccupied. They have always been overgrown with vegetation though it was cleared recently but nature is making its comeback.

Our plot has a lot of trees and our neighbours also have trees lining their boundary wall. So there is abundant shade and hence we get lots of birds and squirrels all the time. There are unusual visitors as well. Twice we got Monitor Lizards, but they never troubled us and left us alone. And once or twice a year, we get snakes. They generally disappear by themselves without troubling us. Usually, they are rat snakes but I once had to kill a viper which made its way to our verandah.

Now that you got the hang of the place, I will narrate the incident. It was a Wednesday. We also own a MG ZS EV. The Ignis belongs to my wife. She goes to Cherthala twice a week for work and due to the 70km round trip, she takes the MG ZS EV on those days. So that day, the Ignis was with me.

When I went to take the car for work at 9 AM, I noticed that the door was only partially shut. Did not think too much of it. Went to work at my hospital as I had a surgery scheduled that day (I am a Gynec Surgeon). Finished my work around 12 PM. I had to buy provisions and fish. The shop that I buy fish from is around 7 km from my home and is situated in a village by the side of a relatively quiet road.

On the drive there, I heard some thuds from the back of the car. It was like something was rolling around in the back. I thought I would investigate on reaching the shop.

The fish shop is a busy place and I generally park my car away from the shop. But that day, it was lunch time and the shop was empty of any customers. I parked the car right in front of the shop.

After making my choices (Prawns and Trevally fish) and asking the staff to fillet it, I went to the car and peered into the back through the window. I had taken my daughter for her karate class the previous evening and she had forgotten her water bottle inside. The bottle was rolling around on the floor and that was the reason for the noise. I went to the passenger side and opened the door. I saw two things. The water bottle on the floor. And a snake’s head peeking out from between the seats.

I shut the door. It took around 20 seconds for me to process the information. I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. But I was also sure that I had just seen a snake. A small one for sure, possibly a rat snake, but definitely, surely a snake.

I wondered what to do for 2 minutes. I couldn’t possibly drive away in a car containing a snake. Like the majority of the people in this world, I can’t stand snakes. If I saw a snake inside my car while I was driving it, it was a surefire recipe for disaster. The matter had to be tackled then & there.

I approached the fish shop guys for help. Their first reaction was disbelief. Then they told me very sensibly to shift the car to the other side of the road, where there were no buildings. I was hesitant to get into the car, so one of the guys got in & drove to the other side.

They opened the boot & removed its contents. They opened the back doors but nothing was seen inside. Then they poked around inside the boot on the back seat. They managed to see the snake. The guys said it appeared non-poisonous (possibly a tree snake).

The snake was small and there was space for it to move around in the back. And it was fast.The Fish Shop guys poked around for some time but couldn’t localize the snake. The idea was to pin the snake to the boot floor and kill it. But it was not working. By this time, there was a small gathering around the boot. They kept pounding the back seats and the boot floor. There was a suggestion of putting some crushed garlic/kerosene-soaked rags in the car as snakes don’t like the smell, making them leave the place.

The guys had kept the back doors open and the poking continued. This was going on for around 10 minutes and the enthusiasm was sort of dying down. All of a sudden, the snake escaped the car from the rear door. It landed directly on the tar macadam and seemed surprised by all the attention. It was a small & slender snake, around 3 feet long. It raced down the tarmac and escaped into one of the surrounding plots. It went so fast that there was no chance of killing it.

The snake was quite active & alert which meant it had not been inside the car for a long time. Not more than one or two days.

I did not take pictures (was not in the right frame of mind).

I thanked the fish shop guys. I am their regular customer, so they didn’t make a big deal about it. There was a small tea shop nearby. I told the proprietor to treat the fish shop guys with tea & snacks and paid for the expenses.

I collected the filleted fish & prawns and left for home. On the way, purchased half a kg of garlic. On reaching home, told our maid to crush it & sprinkle it all around the house and the yard.

That is all.

The car was due for a service next week. I asked the NEXA Service people to unbolt the back seat and check for the unlikely possibility of any snake eggs underneath. They did so and found nothing. They also inspected the underside of the car and did not find any defects/holes in the car floor.

I looked up in the internet and I am reasonably sure that the snake was a non- venomous bronze-back tree snake (Dendralaphis tristis). I still have no idea how it got inside the car.

Preventive steps:

How do you prevent such an incident? A few pointers I could think of:

• Avoid parking your car in areas with dense underbrush. There have been reports of king cobras hitching a ride across districts in cars parked near jungles.
• If you see a snake on the road, avoid running it over. It can get entangled in the underside and stay alive and get carried back to your home.
• Dogs are generally good snake spotters. They detect them and can alert us with a unique bark. We have 2 dogs at our home and both of them are very alert. However, this snake eluded both of them.
• Make sure to keep your car doors closed while it is parked. Although cracking the window glasses slightly is a good measure to reduce the heat inside your car on a hot day, avoid doing so in when parked under trees and in overgrown parking lots.
• Keep your A/c in recirculating mode. If kept in fresh air mode, a small aperture is open below the car through which even small mice can get inside the bonnet. It should be enough for small snakes as well. My A/c was in recirculation mode though.
• Underbody protection can avoid snake incursion to an extent, though it is not foolproof.
• Snakes are non confrontational, as a general rule. Just like we are scared of them, they are also wary of us. They will go their own way if we leave them alone. But in situations like these, there is no other option than to face off.

• Final thoughts:

One of my colleagues once told me “God will show you the right things at the right time” (the gist; something always gets lost in the translation). If my daughter had not left her water bottle behind, I would not have opened the rear door to check and would have missed seeing the snake. The snake would have stayed inside and the discovery would have been far more dramatic, possibly culminating in an accident. And when I did make the discovery, there were good people around to help me with the situation. And the snake turned out to be small and non-venomous, compared to the alternative.

All in all, I cannot really complain. I was lucky.

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