AUTOBODY SPECIALISTS in a local business got more than they bargained for when they discovered a snake crawling up the bonnet and onto the windscreen of a van they were working on.
The incident occurred at Whitty Autobody Accident Repair Centre in Ballinaboola at around 9.30 a.m. on Thursday.
Staff at the business had worked on the vehicle, which had come in from Northern Ireland, and had left to get some tools to finish the job.
However, when they walked back to the van they found a snake slithering its way up the bonnet and onto the windscreen.
The business is run by Whitty brothers, John and Willie.
Commenting on the incident to The Echo, John said he was out of the workshop at the time but was startled when he got the news.
He said he went into another premises on business and the girl there asked him what the story was with the snake in the workshop.
“I thought she was joking at first because at that stage I didn’t know,” he said.
Mr. Whitty said the Rat Snake was not venomous, however, the staff members, including Robbie Rowe, who removed it from the vehicle and placed it in a box until an expert arrived to take it away, didn’t know that at the time.
“The van came in from Northern Ireland originally but we’re not sure where the snake came from,” said Mr. Whitty.
His brother, Willie, said the staff in the workshop thought someone was messing: “One of them went over and thought it was a rubber snake. They poked it and the next thing its head came up and it opened its mouth.”
The workers got a fright when they realised the snake was real. They also realised it was in the van the whole time they had been working on it.
After the staff safely removed it from the van Willie phoned around to see what could be done with it and Lisa Hayes, from the Herpetological Society of Ireland, duly arrived on the scene and took it away.
“At first she wasn’t sure if it was venomous or not which gave us more of a fright,” said Mr. Whitty.
However, it later emerged the Rat Snake is an egg-eating species so the men had nothing to fear.
It’s believed the snake may have been in the van for around two months.
