Now that spring is upon us, we can't wait to get outside. Unfortunately, humans aren’t the only ones itching to break free of their winter dwellings—surrounding wildlife is, too, including large venomous snakes. It’s imperative to keep our eyes and ears open for slithering intruders when out and about in nature, but now we may also need to stay alert within the confines of our cars after a woman discovered an unruly passenger taking up residence in her vehicle’s backseat.
RELATED: Rattlesnake Attack Has Trauma Doctor Issuing a New Warning.
Milan Watt had been going about her normal business when she learned she had been chauffeuring a rattlesnake around town for two weeks after her boyfriend discovered and eventually removed the reptile from the vehicle, local NBC-affiliate KPNX reports.
"He turned around and he had seen a tongue, kind of like flipping at him," Watt recalled.
Watt lives in Arizona, which has the highest number of native snake species of all U.S. states. However, she still "lost [her] mind" over the news. Though the snake kept to itself, Watt said it wasn’t afraid to leer back at them from its curled position.
As luck would have it, they were already parked when the snake made itself known, so Watt’s boyfriend instructed her to carefully exit the car before doing the same himself. They were able to get outside without arousing the snake, which Watt clarified “didn’t rattle or hiss.” Nonetheless, the moment was still terrifying.
“I don’t know what I would have done if I had saw it while I was driving. I would have crashed the car," Watt told the news station.
She explained that they tried to call 911 for help, but authorities were unable to respond to the scene as it wasn't considered an emergency or life-threatening. With that, Watt’s boyfriend took it upon himself to remove the venomous reptile using a broken tree branch. It worked miraculously.
“In a state where there’s lots of critters and lots of things that can get into small spaces, personal spaces to know what to do in that situation and who to call," warned Watt.
Her vehicle may not be snake-infested anymore, but Watt is still in disbelief. The scariest part, she admitted, was that the rattlesnake had chosen her car as its new “home.”
“I was driving around with a snake in my car for two weeks. We got real comfortable in that car. That snake made its home in there,” she said in an interview with KPNX.
RELATED: 6 Top Signs There Are Snakes in Your Yard.
Watt isn’t the first Arizonian to have a scary run-in with a rattlesnake recently. In Sept. 2023, an Arizona man found 20 snakes hiding near the hot water tank in his garage. The month prior, another Arizona resident discovered 11 snakes (nine of which were baby rattlesnakes) sheltering by nearby potted plants just outside their home.
On the topic of snake safety, Snake Guru operator Nicholas Massimotold Arizona’s Family that the best thing people can do is leave them alone and call an expert who can safely remove the reptile.
“Snakes get a really bad reputation. They probably see a human as something that’s huge and scary and have no idea what to think of it. And they want nothing to do with us,” explained Massimo.
"Try not to do anything that’s really jerky and fast that could startle him," he added when speaking to KPNX.
