So, on an otherwise ordinary private plane flight, a pilot was confronted by a very pissed-off cobra mid-flight.
Needless to say, the pilot had exactly the same thought that I did:
A South African pilot is being hailed as a hero this week after he unexpectedly came face-to-face with a venomous snake 11,000 feet in the air.
The pilot, Rudolf Erasmus, 30, laughed about the incident in an interview on Friday, but he and his four passengers, all colleagues, were not hurling any “Snakes on a Plane” jokes on Monday, when he noticed a Cape Cobra, one of South Africa’s most dangerous snakes, slithering around the cockpit.
The group was on the second leg of its journey from the Western Cape to Mbombela, in the eastern region of the country, when Mr. Erasmus, a pilot for an engineer consulting company, felt something unusual. “I felt this cold sensation that was underneath my shirt, underneath where the hip area is,” he said.
He initially thought his water bottle was leaking. As he turned to the left, he saw the head of the snake under his feet. He estimated it to be between four and five feet long.
“I had a moment of stunned silence, like a moment of disbelief,” he said. “It’s as if my brain didn’t register what was going on.”
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Cape Cobras typically live in the Cape provinces of South Africa, but are also found in southern Botswana and Namibia, according to the African Snakebite Institute. A bite from this snake, which comes in a range of colors and can grow to more than seven feet in length, can cause progressive weakness, issues with the respiratory system and even death. Most snakebite deaths in the southern portion of Africa come from Cape Cobras and Black Mambas, the institute said.
On the plane, Mr. Erasmus was considering what to do next. He was scared that the snake would slip through to the back of the cabin and cause panic among the passengers. Knowing that, he spoke over headsets to say that there was an uninvited guest onboard.
“No one was panicking or getting hysterical about the snake,” he said. “And there was a moment of silence in the cabin. You could hear a needle drop.”
It didn’t take long for Mr. Erasmus to make arrangements to land at the nearest airport. “That was definitely the longest 10, 15 minutes of my life,” he said.
………
“As I was standing on the wing, I moved the seat forward a little bit, and I saw this snake curled up in a nice little bundle underneath my seat,” he said.
In case you are wondering, the only reason to watch the Snakes on a Plane is to hear Samuel L. Jackson say the quote in the title.
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