Meet the man who pulled nearly 100 snakes from under an SF Bay Area home

San Francisco Chronicle ^

[nickcarraway]

Snakes on a plane?

No, but there was definitely a movie-worthy amount of snakes living under a house in Santa Rosa, a city in California's Wine County 60 miles north of San Francisco.

Al Wolf, director of Sonoma County Reptile Rescue, responded to a call Oct. 2 from a woman who said a snake den was under her home.

On the first visit, Wolf found 59 newly born babies and 22 adults, as well as a dead cat and a dead possum.

On two follow-up visits, Wolf wrangled 11 more adults.

"I've been doing this 32 years," said Wolf, who runs the Sebastopol-based nonprofit offering wildlife rescue and relocation. "I get calls with snakes under the house pretty often. The most I've done under a house is four or five."

Wolf noted that he has seen dens the size of the one under the Santa Rosa house in the wild, but never in an urban area.

All the snakes were Northern Pacific rattlesnakes, the only venomous snake found in Northern California. Southern California has another seven species of venomous snakes, Wolf said. The Northern Pacific isn't aggressive unless provoked.

When Wolf first went under the house, he quickly found seven snakes and returned to his car to get special gloves.

Crawling on his hands and knees and even on his stomach at times, Wolf tipped over rocks and scanned the area for three hours and 40 minutes to retrieve all the snakes.

"Exciting" is the word Wolf used to describe the situation and the moment when he first realized he was coming upon a big den.

[mad_as_he$$]

Agreed. We had a black snake that lived in our barn for years. He went from about two feet to six feet, we left each other alone.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

You make good points. Especially "no rodents, no snakes".

And it seems like at least half the snake bites that I hear about are received by untrained "hold muh beer" snake "handlers". I never kill snakes except poisonous ones who want to take up residence close to my house. I don't mind the non-venomous ones at all.

But I'm just grateful I don't live in Australia. They have some seriously nasty snakes (and spiders too!). Australian snakes never give you a second chance.