Posted on 10/13/2021 8:51:01 PM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Too bad he didn’t bother with city hall!
I’m totally happy that such people exist who enjoy getting this type of work done.
‘Merica is still a pretty great place, if we can keep it.
Just don’t tick ‘em off and keep ‘em out of the liquor cabinet and they’ll be OK.
You, however, may want to imbibe a bit.. as you pack hastily and vey carefully, then vamoose..
I only saw about 6-7 for 13 years on my desert property. The guy that bought the land from me remodeled and pulled out 40-50.
I usually try to keep our screen door closed but one evening not many weeks ago, it was left open. I opened the front door to take the dogs out, and froze, as did the young pom pup next to me. As did the rattler coiled on the door mat and ready to strike.
The snake hesitated just long enough for me to grab said pup by the tail, and pull back sharply while slamming the door on said snake. Pup was so surprised I didn’t even get so much as a growl for pulling his tail. Unfortunately the rattler disappeared while I was looking for the snakeshot rounds. We hunted for that guy for a week or so but once satisfied it wasn’t hiding around the house, and had likely headed down the hill for wilder spaces, I relaxed, a little, but I still open the door slowly. I”m very thankful he was coiled on the mat where he could be seen instead of hidden behind the boots kept by the door we would have walked past. I’ve had four rattler encounters in the 10 years of living in the desert - two rattles are on my fireplace, two got away, but this one was the closest encounter by far.
To dispell a myth that Calif rattlers won’t cross gravel - yeah, they do. Our front is graveled 10’ to the driveway because we thought that, too. Not only did this guy make it across the gravel, he slid up 5 concrete steps to get to the welcome mat!
Interview with snake #100 right after his funeral!!! /sarc
You can't make this stuff up. Only in Calfornia.
In other states, normal people rescue dogs and cats.
Chlorine and ammonia and lots of it then take a short trip and do it again and again and again and again then burn the house down.
An air strike was in order, with snakeyes and napalm to make sure.
The ones in West Texas aren’t bothered by gravel or sand or pavement. On cool fall evenings they would like the edge of the pavement between Pecos and Cyanosa, Texas and I’m sure other roads but that is where I would see them driving to a gas plant.
Which I take as meaning he usually does it bare handed
Snakes that can drive? Cool.
In general I agree but most snake bites occur when untrained people decide to mess with the snake. So these guys get a pass from me.
http://www.sonomacountyreptilerescue.com/
BTW if you have rattlesnakes you generally also have rodents.
“Snakes that can drive? Cool.”
Yeah, and sometimes they can put their tail in their mouth and constrict their bodies around a bicycle rim and become quite the efficient bicycle tire.
They all drive Cobras.
Then she’ll have to call a rodent exterminator. Snakes of the non venomous types are a good thing generally.
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.
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