The engine and propeller of an airboat are enclosed in a protective metal cage that prevents objects, such as tree limbs, branches, clothing, beverage containers, passengers, or wildlife, from coming into contact with the whirling propeller, which can cause traumatic injury to the operator and passengers or devastating damage to the vessel. Safety cages do not always work perfectly, however: people have had their fingers sliced off by airboat propellers, and tree branches entering safety cages have wrecked airboat propellers and sprayed the operators and passengers with woodchips and other shrapnel.