Meanwhile, in Australia, There Literally Was a Snake on a Plane

We're using past tense because, unfortunately, the snake did not make it to its final destination this morning.

We're using past tense because, well, the snake did not make it to its final destination this morning. The ripe-for-a-Samuel L. Jackson-joke tale began on a Qantas flight to Papua New Guinea. "QF191 was about 20 minutes into its 6.15am flight from Cairns to Port Moresby on Thursday when a woman pointed outside the plane and told cabin crew: 'There's a snake on the wing … There's its head and if you look closely you can see a fraction of its body,'" reads the report from the Sydney Morning Herald's Eamonn Duff. This is a better picture of what those passengers saw:

Experts say the serpent was a scrub or amethystine python, which can grow to 22 feet long. And this one was a fighter. From one passenger:

I felt quite sad for it, really. For the remainder of the flight, he was trying to pull himself back into the plane, even though he was fighting against 400km/h winds. The cabin crew told us that at cruising altitude, it was minus 12 degrees outside - but not even that was able to finish him.

The snake eventually lost its grip, and, well:

As it slowly lost its grip, the wind repeatedly whipped it against the side of the plane, spraying blood across the engine.

''At that point, the pilot turned to us and said: 'He should be dead'. Yet even on descent, the snake was fighting to find safety. ''Until we landed, I looked out the window and the thing was still moving.''

It's okay. You can shudder now.