For one pilot, “Snakes on a Plane” was not just a movie but apersonal experience Thursday.

Dr. Ed Carruth was flying from Meridian in a one-seat plane whenhe felt something “licking” his arm. He said he wasn’t sure what itwas at first.

“The last thing you think about when you’re flying an airplaneis a snake on your leg,” Carruth said in recalling the experienceafter landing Thursday at the Brookhaven Municipal Airport. “I’vebeen flying planes for 50 years and over 14,000 hours, and this isthe most unusual in-flight emergency I’ve encountered.

“I guess it wasn’t exactly an emergency, but I did almost hurtmyself when I saw it.”

It turned out to be a gray rat snake. The experience, he said,was surreal.

“I never thought it could be a snake, I thought maybe a loosehose or something, until it started shaking and moving,” he said.”And there was no stick or broom in the cockpit – I didn’t haveanything to fight him with.”

Carruth said, however, that once he and the snake both got theirbearings, they came to an agreement.

“I did some aerobatics,” he said. “And once he got oriented, hewent to the back of the plane.”

The thought crossed his mind, he said, to throw the slitheringstowaway out the open door of the plane. But he then thought betterof it.

“I tried to shoo him out the door, but then I thought about somepoor farmer down there on the ground,” he said. “Can you imagine ifa snake just fell out of the sky at you?”

Upon Carruth’s arrival at the airport, Airport Manager CliffordBritt called in Monticello snake expert Joey Pradillo to locate thesnake and remove it from the airplane.

Pradillo said the snake was likely more afraid of the doctorthan vice versa.

“The snake is going to try to get away,” he said. “What benefitis it to attack something 900 times your size? See, we’re just noton their menu.”

It’s not uncommon for snakes to live in airplane hangars,Pradillo said. That is probably why the rat snake found its wayinto Carruth’s plane.

“It happens when people hangar their planes,” he said. “Thesnakes are in there after the mice. And the hangar is cool on theinside, and that’s why he was in there in the first place.”

Britt said this is the first stowaway he’s seen in his years asan airport manager.

“This is the first time I’ve seen a snake in a plane,” he said.”We transported dogs and cats during Katrina, but this is the firststowaway we’ve had on an aircraft, especially to get caught inmid-flight.”

Carruth said he learned how to deal with snakes from a verycredible source. However, the “snake on a plane” experience putthings in a new perspective.

“As long as I can see them and they’re away from me, they don’tbother me,” he said. “I learned that from the Crocodile Hunter. Andthe thought crossed my mind that I’m glad it was a chicken snakeand not a rat.”

Pradillo pointed out that while the snake might have surprisedCarruth, he had possibly been a hidden blessing up until thatpoint.

“If the snake hadn’t been in the hangar, he might be havingelectrical problems in the plane from the mice. That actuallyhappens more than people think,” he said.

Britt said the rat snake was a strange passenger to have arrivein his airport, but he said he could remember one that wascomparably odd.

“There was a baby monkey in a diaper once that came in with thisfamily from Texas,” he said. “He’d get on you and look for bugs onyou and groom you.”

Pradillo, who put the snake away in a bag to remove him from thepremises, said he was going to release it into the wild. When itwas suggested that it be let loose in the airport hangar, Brittgrinned uncertainly.

“Well, that’s a thought,” he said.