Watch sneaky, green passenger emerge from couple’s car hood on Australia highway
_fitted.png "Kerry Jenkins and her partner were driving on the Australian Pacific Highway when they noticed a long, green snake on the hood of their car, a TikTok video shows.")
Kerry Jenkins and her partner were cruising down the Pacific Highway along the eastern coast of Australia when they noticed something peculiar.
Nearly 160 miles into their drive home from a family beach vacation, only about 20 miles from home, the couple realized they had a sneaky hitchhiker. Slithering into the view of the windshield from the hood of the car was a small, skinny, yellow-green figure bouncing.
“What the ...” Jenkins laughed behind the camera in a now-viral Sunday, Dec. 4 TikTok she posted about the encounter.
As the creature moved up the hood of the car, Jenkins realized what she was seeing.
“Oh it’s a green snake,” she told her partner as the snake struggled to keep its balance atop the car as it flew down the highway. “Babe, you need to pull over so it can just get out.”
For the next two or so minutes, as the couple debated whether to pull over, the snake fought to stay on top of the car.
“I don’t wanna get anywhere near it,” Jenkins’ partner said.
First mimicking a windshield wiper, the snake is seen sliding between the two sides of the car’s hood. After a dizzying minute of slipping back-and-forth, the snake seemingly tries to stabilize itself by picking its head up.
“Mate you just need to hold on to your tail,” Jenkins told the snake in the video. “Oh don’t put your head up. Mate! He’s angry.”
(Warning: The video contains explicit language.)
Eventually, the car began to slow, taking an exit off the highway. Rounding the bend of the road, the snake flies to the left of the hood and disappears from view.
“I don’t think it came out because it wasn’t on the road,” Jenkins assures her partner.
In a second video posted Monday, Jenkins explained that after stopping the car, she and her partner located the snake, still hanging onto the front of the hood. The sneaky passenger wasn’t ready to be caught though, so it quickly slithered onto the ground and back up to the underside of the car where it disappeared again.
“We continued to drive home and looked on and off over the next few hours,” Jenkins wrote in the video’s caption. “With a torch we ended up seeing him, and my son tried to catch him and get him out and he darted back into the motor. Again, unsuccessful.”
Monday morning, Jenkins said she tried again to find the snake without any luck.
Finally, early Monday evening, Jenkins’ partner began to search for the pesky snake again under the car’s hood. This time was successful.
“My partner just popped the bonnet and he was sitting on top of the motor,” she wrote on TikTok. “My partner dropped the bonnet afraid (massive snake phobia). I opened it back up and we could see his tail sliding into a crevice.”
The snake, still not ready to abandon ship, disappeared again into the car.
TikTok users commented on Jenkins’ latest video, arguing that the family’s car now belonged to the snake.
“So basically it’s the snakes car you just borrow it now,” one user wrote.
“The snake has been trying to contact you about your car’s extended warranty,” another commented on the video.
“You need to make peace with the fact that you have a car snake now,” a third user wrote.
Green tree snakes are non-venomous snakes that are commonly found in the northeastern region of Australia, according to the Queensland Museum. While they are not venomous, they can grow to be up to 6.5 feet.
This story was originally published December 5, 2022 at 4:54 PM with the headline "Watch sneaky, green passenger emerge from couple’s car hood on Australia highway."
