Advertisement

'Snake' in car scares Austrian driver

Author thumbnail
'Snake' in car scares Austrian driver
A slow worm. Photo: Jules Howard

A 19-year-old man from Upper Austria had a scare when he was driving home to Wels on Saturday night - as a 40 cm long reptile crawled out of a vent in his car and slithered across the passenger door.

Advertisement

"Suddenly I noticed a snake, as it crawled out of the ventilation grille - I wasn’t terrified but it did give me a bit of a shock,” Martin Hödl said.

Luckily Hödl was not driving on the motorway, but on the quieter Innviertler Strasse. He was able to pull over into a small street, put his hazard lights on, and called the fire brigade.

Firefighters identified the ‘snake’ as a harmless slow worm and after capturing it released it into a nearby meadow.

Slow worms look like snakes but are actually legless lizards. Their name is misleading as they can move very fast.

A fireman said it was an unusual case; “it’s very rare that a snake will get into the car’s ventilation”.

More

Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at [email protected].
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.

Please log in to leave a comment.

See Also