WASHINGTON — A woman’s lunch-break drive to a Warrenton, Virginia, Walmart was sidelined this week by the cutest little stowaway — a 30-inch garter snake.
Lora Goff was just cruising through downtown Warrenton in her SUV, minding her own, when the snake slithered out of a vent — and got tangled in her phone charger.
“So I was like: ‘Oh my gosh. What do I do?'” she recounted. “And there was, of course, no parking, so I just kind of pulled in behind somebody illegally and put the car in park and jumped out and called 911.”
Because, hello — snake.
“I said: ‘It’s not an emergency, but I’ve got this snake coming out of the vent in my car. Can you send someone to help me?'”
An animal-control officer arrived at the scene to evict the reptile, but he was afraid of snakes, too, she said. His attempt to capture it with a special tool failed, and it promptly retreated into the shadows.
“[The animal-control officer] tried and tried, and it finally just hid underneath my front seat, got up underneath my front seat and we could not find it for … I mean we looked and looked for 20-25 minutes, and there was nothing he could do at that point.”
Lunch break was almost over, and she had to get back to work. What to do?
The officer told Goff it was not poisonous. So she braved the creepiness and drove her unwanted passenger back to work. Co-workers did what they could to help. No dice.
Then the suggestions came: Leave a window open. Leave the door open.
“I said, ‘You know, I need to make certain that it’s not in my car,'” she said.
A Google search offered up the solution: glue traps. Using a friend’s car, she drove to a hardware store and bought four to put under each seat.
At 5 p.m., nothing. Goff then drove the 2013 Cadillac SRX back to her home, and hoped that the snake might venture out overnight. The next morning, her husband went out to check.
“He said, ‘I think you got something.'”
He put the sticky/slimy combination in the back of his truck and transported it to an, um, undisclosed location.
“I don’t care what happened to it at this point,” she said, laughing, “as long as it was out of my car.”
