If you thoughtSnakes on a Planewas just a silly action motion picture , think again . An literal snake on a plane recently made it all the way from Australia to Scotland by concealing itself in an unwitting woman ’s shoe .
unpack her suitcase , Moira Boxall was so appalled to find a snake in her thrill – hunky-dory , plimsoll – that at first , she thought it was a fake serpent placed there as a humbug . On closer inspection , she realized the critter was very much alive and , well , accompanied by a skin that it had shed on the journey . You need something to choke the time on the 15,000 - kilometer ( 9,300 - international nautical mile ) flight of stairs from Queensland to Glasgow , after all .
Moira report the scaly stowaway to theScottish SPCA , an animal well-being charity , who came to the snake ’s rescue .
“ I responded to a call from a woman who had just repay from a vacation in Australia who had establish a small snake inside her brake shoe in her grip , ” Taylor Johnstone , Scotch SPCA animal deliverance officer , said in an electronic mail send out to IFLScience . “ When I arrived , the ophidian had been contained by the caller , so I safely removed the snake from the property . "
Fortunately , the Snake River posed no menace as it was a non - venomousspotted python , a species often kept as pet . The well - travel reptile is now secure and being reckon after at the Scottish SPCA ’s animal rescue and rehoming center in Edinburgh , where it is currently being quarantine .
Bizarrely , snakes on plane are n’t as rare as you might think . And when species terminate up in places they should n’t be , they canwreak havocon the local environs . The island ofGuam , in the Western Pacific , is one such post – it ’s been all overrun by ophidian that slithered aboard military planes in the forties and ‘ 50s .
Unfortunately , Guam ’s native critter had not adapted to portion out their island with the comparatively large and venomous brown tree serpent , and many fall victim to the invaders . In fact , 10 out of 12 of Guam ’s native timberland chick were literally eat on to extinguishing . And if an island void of call but full of snakes was n’t unappealing enough , the lack of bird has lead to a huge surge in spiders .
So , while the account of the lilliputian python who require to see the globe did n’t end too severely , if you ’re ever traveling home from snake country , be trusted to check your skid .
