This morning I leave the house to make the 1.5 hour drive north to pick up a liner tray of 60 Kestrel Blueberry plants......they didn't have bigger plants so got what I could.   I arrive at Millers BB and it is a bit chilly, about 50 degrees.   Start on my way home and had to make a quick stop at Lowes and there is one about halfway home right off the interstate in Ocala Florida.   Once done I get back on the interstate and I'm headed down I-75 southbound have the cruise set at 77MPH the heat going and the sun is shining in the truck nicely, beautiful day.  Have the liner tray of 60 blueberry plants on the passenger side front seat of my truck.  I have about 7 miles to go on I-75 and there is a lot of traffic to watch with all the snowbirds headed down and with the approaching holiday when I catch movement out of the corner of my eye....I glance toward the passenger seat and there, in my blueberries,  is a 3 foot long rat snake looking back at me, its head is up above above the 10” tall blueberry plants like a periscope.  I wait and with one eye on the road and the other on the snake I see it starts trying to climb on my dash.  So I grab the tip of it’s tail and it is now frisky and warm from the sun and heater.  it opens it’s mouth and strikes at me....so I let go.  It is now on the seat in front of the flat of blueberries still trying to get up on the dash......so I move over into the third lane, roll my window down and grasp the snakes tail with my left hand and in one motion snap it past me and out the window lol......all I see is this snake whipsawing through the air and see it hit the grass in the median.  The motion was so quick I came very close to throwing not only the snake out the window but almost flicked my wedding ring with it.  That would have been fun trying to explain that one to my wife.   I just wonder if anyone behind me saw the snake in the air:)  

If that had been a person that was terrified of snakes it could have been a very bad situation.....

Sounds like a scene from a James Bond movie.

Yikes, that'll speed up the heart rate!  Could make for an interesting ad campaign for the nursery:

"Free bird deterrent with each liner tray.  CPR sold separately." 

I never get that lucky, the rat snake would make a welcome inhabitant in my yard. 

I'm glad this encounter did not cause you to wreck.   I'm sure you'll inspect those flats a little closer in the future. 

Great story, thank you for sharing. 

Thanks for sharing!    : 0)

Also, my husband said to call Miller's and say "shore hope you didn't charge me extra for that snake in the blueberries".

Wow, I think I broke a sweat just reading that!  Glad it turned out well in the end.

Lucky that wasn't a pygmy rattler....

Why couldn’t you have my mother-in-law as your passenger??? L

Man, where is the video????

Wills:

Are you sure you don't need more land? Nice work with the snake!!

Good luck explaining to your wife that you lost your wedding ring playing with your snake ;)

Great story! I agree, lucky you didn't end up in a wreck.

LOL.
All that without even bothering to pull over. Impressive, Wills!

Great story!  Nice driving!  Glad it worked out.

Oh, hell no!
I'm not terribly afraid of snakes, but if ANYTHING snuck up on me like that, there would have been blueberry plants all over the road...

It was a first for me......i'm sure it was a first for the snake as well.   

Geez! What a surprise! And it's too bad he didn't stay put until you got him home, at least there you could've had a pet snake. BTW, if that was me, I would have been on the side of the road pointing at a snake in my car!

I'm glad you didn't get a ticket for littering.

Maybe I need to start carrying a bigger knife....

Wills, you need  a dash cam!

thats the oppisite of wat i need i cut my finger badly yesterday trying to graft a cutting i new it was bad idea  but i just kept going i got the cutting horizontal and wham it slipped cut my figer i just went to the sink and rinced off the blood and i killed a fully black snake by one of my fig trees had to it came once it would probaly come back it made me step on a thorn i got mad got the shovel a nearly chopped the thing into bite sized pieces

Should have let him go in your orchard, it would have kept the rodent population down. I got bit by a black rat snake that I was trying to free from bird netting around my figs. It was the third rat snake I set free within a short period, not even sure if they weren't the same snake. Then there was the copperhead I discovered after I kneeled down right next to it at dusk when I was reaching under the netting to pick a fig. It was too tangled to safely cut free. That is the only negative to using the netting.

Mike in Hanover, VA

 if i ever got bit by a snake i would kill it first so thel no wat antivenom to give me if it was poisonous