Pilot Didn't Like His Arm Being Licked

What's a pilot supposed to do when you're flying along, minding your own business... and a snake starts "licking" your arm? Getting it off of you with some aerobatics is one way.

Dr. Ed Carruth did just that during a flight across Mississippi Thursday. The physician was flying along in his unknown-type one-seater when a stowaway made its presence known in the form of a grey rat snake, according to the Associated Press.

"I've been flying planes for 50 years and over 14,000 hours, and this is the most unusual in-flight emergency I've encountered," he said. "I guess it wasn't exactly an emergency, but I did almost hurt myself when I saw it."

Since he didn't have anything to remove the snake and since he really wanted to maintain control of his aircraft, how did he get the snake away from him?

"I did some aerobatics," Carruth said. "And once he got oriented, he went to the back of the plane."

Carruth landed safely at Brookhaven Municipal Airport where a snake expert was summoned to remove the interloper.

According to expert Joey Padillo, the resident snake expert, who released the stowaway into the wild, it's really not all that uncommon for snakes to live in hangars.

"The snakes are in there after the mice. And the hangar is cool on the inside, and that's why he was in there in the first place," he said.

There was a similar incident last year in Ohio during a cross country flight, as ANN reported. Monty Coles was more than a bit surprised when he spotted a snake peering at him from behind the instrument panel of his Piper Cherokee.

"Nothing in any of the manuals ever described anything like this," the 62-year-old Cross Lanes, WV resident said. But the advice given 25 years earlier from his flight instructor immediately came to mind: "No matter what happens, fly the plane," Coles told the Associated Press.

While maintaining control of his aircraft with one hand, Coles reached down and grabbed the snake behind its head with his other hand.

"There was no way I was letting that thing go. It coiled all around my arm, and its tail grabbed hold of a lever on the floor and started pulling," he said.

Coles then radioed the Gallipolis tower, asking clearance for an emergency landing.

"They came back and asked what my problem was. I told them I had one hand full of snake and the other hand full of plane. They cleared me in."

According to the Mississippi Herpetological Atlas, gray rat snakes are non-venomous constrictors feeding on frogs, lizards, rodents, rabbits and birds, and are adept climbers.

FMI: www.brookhavenair.com, www.cfr.msstate.edu/gap/MHAnews2.html