Posted on 09/26/2006 8:29:04 PM PDT by sonsofliberty2000
The Hepworths knew the house would require some maintenance. But they never thought they'd need a snake charmer. Shortly after Lyman and Jeanine Hepworth began working on a rundown property outside of town, they experienced a trauma more fit for Samuel L. Jackson's character in "Snakes on a Plane" than a pair of eastern Idaho do-it-yourselfers.
Snakes, perhaps thousands of them, fell on Lyman Hepworth's head when he opened the door to a pump house near the small house the couple planned to buy.
"When it warmed up, we walked onto the yard and the whole yard moved," Jeanine Hepworth told the Rexburg Standard Journal.
One day, Lyman Hepworth reached to turn on a light and discovered the pull cord was actually a snake.
Last March, the Hepworths were having money troubles. Struggling to pay off their medical bills and make house payments, they sold their old home.
They planned to buy a home and a couple of outbuildings from an acquaintance on a few acres outside tiny Wilford.
Then they found the snakes _ in the lawn, in the living room and in their hair.
Turns out the property was a winter snake sanctuary, likely a snake den or hibernaculum where snakes gather in large numbers to hibernate for the winter, said Lauri Hanauska-Brown, a biologist with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.
In the spring and summer the snakes fan out across the wilds of eastern Idaho, but as the days get shorter and cooler, the snakes return to the resting place _ in this case, the Hepworth's new home _ where they ball up for heat.
The snakes are likely a terrestrial garter snake, Hanauska-Brown said. Reptiles are a protected species meaning the Hepworths cannot bait them or kill them, she said.
The couple has not contacted Fish and Game to move the garters, Hanauska-Brown said. The department would attempt to move the snakes, but it could be difficult because if they move them too far they would die and if they move them close by the snakes would likely return to hibernate, she said.
"They are used to going there and kind of balling up," Hanauska-Brown told The Associated Press. "That sounds kind of Indiana Jonesish. But this is a natural thing."
The Hepworths never moved in, but Lyman Hepworth's brother is still making payments, though the seller offered to refund their money when he found out about the infestation.
Their plan: They sent a videotape of the house, their children and, of course, the snakes to the producers of "Extreme Home Makeover," in hopes the television show would send its decorators in for a filmed renovation.
The video showed snakes slithering on the back porch, climbing up the foundation and a ball of snakes on the side of the home, Jeanine Hepworth said.
The couple will not find out if the show chooses their reptile refuge for a fix-up challenge until next year.
Meanwhile, summer has turned to fall. And the snakes that have been out for the summer are making their way back to Hepworth's little home in Wilford.
:shutters:
This gave me the willies!
I wanna post a certain picture, but it's got a cuss word in it.
So here:
http://www.amymorrison.com/Images/SOAP.jpg
What the heck are you and I doing up this late, Charles. We mucst be nuts.
Of course, all my potential customers would be scratching their heads and wondering what the heck verba means, but I'd think it was really cool, and that's what's important.
LOL! Quality.....
I have ten gecko's on my kitchen screen right now.
I sometimes leave the light on intentionally to draw extra bugs for them.
I vividly remember my Dad dispatching a garter with his 30-30 when I was a kid...the thing was at least 3 feet long and he was sure it would bite one of us if left alone. On a 3 acre lot with three rambunctious boys, the rest of the garters spent a lot of time in various clear containers. :-)
Supposedly overbuilding wiped out most of the variety of garter snake native to SF. Which is ironic because the libs constantly push for more housing, so every open spot gets built on. I've got an older home with a big yard, lots of trees and brush, and critters.
You got a 4 foot garter snake? Disappointed to say mine are small (having snake envy).
They should never have told anyone and just quietly remodeled."
Sounds like we Californians solution to pesky and dangerous cougars:
Shoot
Shovel
Shut Up
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Looking to buy a house, cheap?
Cats wouldn't help the problem....
Our daughter took lessons at the home of her piano teacher. I went in with her and sat to listen to the lesson. All of the sudden the teacher had our daughter stop playing and said to listen. We did and you could here the snakes moving up and down the walls. She said that they had been trying to get rid of them for years.
She has tried everything to get rid of them and nothing works. They have never gotten inside the house, just the walls and the attic. They are quite large, but I don't know what kind they are. I told her to pour mothballs down the side walls and throughout the attic. She said she'd rather have the snakes than the mothball smell, besides, who is going to go up in the attic to do the job?
OMG...that is so disgusting. IS that the ewes head poking through it's skin? THe snake surely died right? SICK
My first thought was that maybe they moved Congress to Idaho....
It's true. People let snakes and reptiles loose when they get too big. THey say the everglades is overpopulating with Pythons. Stupid people.
Biggest mistake those folks made was telling the govt. Now they are hosed.
Nice philosophy to live by.
In my state, ALL snakes are protected. I don't think I could ever kill a garter snake. We have too many cottonmouths for me to get rid of (poisonous snakes are O.K. to kill if they are life-threatening which, since I have kids, is always).
I haven't killed any kind of ant except fire ants since I first encountered the latter. I want as many docile species as possible competing with the invaders.
Look on the bright side. I'll bet there are no rodent or insect problems.
My next words: "You wanna bet?"
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