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9-foot cobra pulled from van, and it's not the first time

We're detecting a pattern

Snakes coiled up in the dashboards, engine compartments and other closed spaces of cars are, quite apart from Super Snakes, their very own genre around here. There have been so many of these incidents that after this one or this one or this one or a half-dozen others to come before them, we thought we'd had it with these mortar-forking snakes in these mortar-forking cars. But the latest video, above, which recently aired on CNN and BBC, has its own special snake charm.

First, it features a highly venomous king cobra, which can, among other tricks, spit in your eye and blind you, so that's pretty exciting. Second, the wildlife police who pull this bad boy out of the dash seem a bit cavalier about the danger. No protective gear other than those big gloves and a set of goggles — which the snake handler wears only half the time. And once they've extracted the snake from the van with that handy snake-grabbing stick, why does the guy then take the snake's head in his hand? He has to move fast as lightning to get his hand out of the cage. Why not stick with the stick?

But the other thing we noticed is how vans seem to be the cobra ride-sharing vehicle of choice. YouTube also contained this video of another Chinese snake (unless the same cobra is a repeat offender) and also this video, which has scant information on location. But the common denominator: They're all in vans.

So if you've been looking for a reason to buy a fun car instead of a minivan, is there any better excuse than the risk of cobra infestation?

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