Dealing with serpentine belts is an everyday task for auto mechanics, but a technician in South Carolina found himself face-to-face with a real-life serpent when he lifted the hood on a Mk3 Ford Focus.
The 2015 Focus had come into Beach Automotive in Myrtle Beach for regular mechanical work, but that job was hit with an instant delay when Tony Galli discovered an 8-ft (2.4 m) albino boa constrictor on top of the 2.0 Duratec engine.
“I popped the hood open, I saw this big thing laid across it, I didn’t even know what it was,” Galli told WPDE. “I thought it was an oil sock to absorb oil. Then I was like ‘No that’s a snake.’ then I poked it and it moved and I was like ‘that thing is alive.’”
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South Carolina has plenty of wild wildlife, including bears and alligators, but boa constrictors are not native to the region, so the shop turned to Russell Cavendar, otherwise known as The Snake Chaser, for help. Cavendar safely removed the snake, though he did need to get Beach Automotive’s technicians to remove multiple parts from the engine bay to give him better access to the reptile. The animal expert guessed the snake, which isn’t venomous but has a nasty bite, had crawled into the engine bay for warmth.
The car’s owner said he had no idea where the snake had come from, and since the species is not indigenous, it must have escaped from its owner’s care, or, just as likely, was dumped into the wild. Although the boa looks pretty chunky to us, Cavendar says it was underweight, suggesting it had not been well cared for, and promised to nurse it back to health and give it to a breeder if the owner didn’t come forward to reclaim it. Whether the Ford‘s owner or the repair shop is footing the bill for getting rid of the 8-ft snake, we don’t know.
Source: WPDE; Images: The Snake Chaser