Never let it be said that Andy Mills doesn”t know his asp from his elbow ” after an all-too-close encounter of the herpetological kind, Hertz Luton Airport manager has become something of an expert on the fanged fraternity.
It all started when Hertz customer Chris O”Sullivan phoned in to say there was a three-foot-long Californian king snake loose in his Ford Focus.
Unsurprisingly, Andy suspected a wind-up (a load of cobras, in fact) leading to some dreadful joke about windscreen vipers. As the conversation continued, however, he realised Chris wasn”t taking the hiss ” there really was a runaway reptile in his rental car.
Turns out Chris had been looking after the snake for his brother and, on the journey to the airport, the creature had escaped from its container and slithered behind the dashboard, hence the expression ”a dash for freedom”.
”Hertz is a great company to work for,” says Andy, ”but there”s nothing in the manual about getting king snakes out from speedometers.”
After six hours and two fruitless calls to the RSPCA another rental company at Luton Airport found a staffer whose brother was a trained snake handler.
”A real charmer,” said Andy. In 30 minutes it was all over and after two days” R&R at a local pet shop the asp was reunited to its rightful owner.
”We are going to have another look at the Hertz manual,” he added. ”One thing for sure it will keep me in beers for a few weeks. It”s a rattling good story.”