No carry on’s allowed
A South African pilot, Rudolph Erasmus, had sold a trip private plane flight between cities of Bloemfontein and Pretoria for some Corporate exec’s. The takeoff went fine and when they got up to about 11,000 feet in the air — Rudy felt something cool in his shirt. At first, he assumed water had spilled onto his shirt from a leaking water bottle, but discovered the source of the feeling to be something far freakier. “As I turned to the left and looked down, I saw the cobra receding its head backwards underneath the seat,” Erasmus told the outlet. “To be truly honest, it’s as if my brain did not register what was going on.” It turned out later: that two employees working at Worcester Flying Club, where the plane departed from, said they had seen a reptile sheltering under the aircraft. Unfortunately, their attempts to wrangle it were unsuccessful.
The snake Rudy found himself sharing the cockpit with was a venomous Cape cobra — a snake with a bite that can kill someone in as quickly as 30 minutes. Rudy told the BBC that he didn’t want to cause panic among the four passengers in the private plane, a Beechcraft Baron so he opted to keep it light at first, telling them that there was “an extra unwanted voyager” onboard before later breaking the severity of the news. “I did inform the passengers: ‘Listen, the snake is inside the aircraft, it’s underneath my seat, so let’s try and get down to the ground as soon as we can,'” he said. “You could hear a needle drop, and I think everyone froze for a moment or two.”
Thankfully, in this case, both the passengers and the cobra remained “calm” while Rudy touched down at the nearest airport in Welkom. The captain then let the passengers deplane first while he stayed behind to try and find the slithery straggler. “I stood on the wing on the plane and moved the seat forward to try and spot the snake,” he described. “It was curled up under my seat. It was quite a big fellow.” Rudy threw it out and as of yet, the cobra remains at large. The engineers who stripped down the plane post-touchdown were reportedly unable to locate it. The South African aviation community has praised Erasmus for remaining cool under pressure. “I must compliment Rudolf Erasmus for the way he handled the situation.” All aboard made it safely out.
Sneaky snake laughs
What’s worse than a box full of snakes?
A box that was SUPPOSED to be full of snakes.
Doctor: Can you describe the snake that bit you?
Patient: Yes. It looked like an angry rope.
We would all be living in paradise if Adam & Eve were Chinese.
Because they would’ve eaten the snake and not the apple.
Why don’t snakes ever bite lawyers?
Professional courtesy.
April 6th Birthdays
1976 – Candace Bure, 1999 – Peyton List, 1956 – Michelle Bachman, 1992 – Julie Ertz
1947 – John Ratzenberger, 1972 – Shaquille O’Neal, 1926 – Alan Greenspan, 1938 – Billy Dee Williams