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.   

[QUOTE=NativeSun]Lucky that wasn't a pygmy rattler....[/QUOTE]

Yeah I think that would have required pulling over.....I have heard of people being bitten by them in potted plants in nurseries.  

The funny thing is the plant flat was not in a tray, it is just a 60 cell pack but they are deep wells, like 6" deep.  The snake was cold and must have been wrapped in the tubes of the cells.

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

http://youtu.be/dL3ZIc5IL2w

LOL, nice story Wills! Gotta give props to Johnny, got a good laugh out of his comment. Funny thing is, I've lost my wedding ring 3 times in the last 7 years while fishing. Same sinario too. Wade fishing, catch a trout and string it. Go to fling off the slime and there she goes! But playing with your snake and lossing your wedding ring......classic;)

And I thought flying snakes only lived in Asia.

Laughed long and loud reading your story.  A rat snake is at the center of my snake story too.  Built a new house in Upstate NY and thought I would put the garden in before the house was built as I was quite pregnant at the time.  While turning over a spade full of dirt I noticed about 50+ small snakes all about the size of earth worms. Having kept king snakes as pets as a kid, I thought great, a batch of garter snakes to get rid of pests and carefully set them aside.  Little did I know that they were rat snakes which will grow to 3-4' in length and which are somewhat territorial when raising babies.  Since I knew my days of being able to reach the ground to weed were limited, I set in my rhubarb, blueberries and asparagus and put black plastic between the rows to control weeds.  Although I did not see them the first year the snakes grew and prospered. I evolved from running out to the garden in my bare feet and feeling these things wriggling out from under my feet to carrying a bamboo rake to beat on the plastic ahead of me to meeting good sized territorial snakes when pulling rhubarb and doing other gardening chores.  They were numerous enough to become nuisances and some even acquired names.  There was one particularly large specimen that like to hang out beside the pool and I told one of my associates in Ukraine about it.  We decided that its personality was much like someone we had to deal with who was particularly unpleasant and promptly decided to name the snake after this person. At that point I got my camera out and decided I would take a picture of the snake to e-mail over so everyone could see our nemesis' namesake.  About that time my sister and my mother arrive from FL for a visit and we are all laughing about naming snakes after our least favorite people (my sister was going through a nasty divorce at the time and my mother thought we should name it after her soon to be ex-husband).  Apparently my sister told one of her friends about the snake naming and unbeknownst to us, this friend puts an ad in the paper saying for $1 we would name a snake after their least favorite person.  I found out about it when envelopes started arriving addressed to me containing $1 and a name.  To make a long story short, we received enough requests  to go out for a nice dinner at a Chinese restaurant and see a movie. 

Wills, nice job!  That should turn-around some of those snowbirds and keep them from getting down to me! :D

Poor little blueberry loving snake just wanted to see your figs....

[QUOTE=GRamaley]Poor little blueberry loving snake just wanted to see your figs....[/QUOTE]

Actually it wanted to help PROTECT the figs from the birds etc.  You lost an ally, Wills!

I'm kinda of fond of rat snakes myself and would most likely have taken it somewhere safe and released it.  I had a pet rat snake as a teen and it was very gentle and easy to handle.
Funny story and I must admit I might have been shaken up if one unexpectedly appeared in the car.