.....this might rattle some people.......


More than 90 snakes found under Northern California home

....Al Wolf is used to clearing one or two snakes from under houses but recently was called by a woman who said she had seen rattlesnakes scurry under her Northern California house and was surprised to find more than 90 rattlesnakes getting ready to hibernate.

Wolf, director of Sonoma County Reptile Rescue, said he crawled under the mountainside home in Santa Rosa and found a rattlesnake right away, then another and another. He got out from under the house, grabbed two buckets, put on long, safety gloves, and went back in. He crawled on his hands, knees and stomach, tipping over more than 200 small rocks.

“I kept finding snakes for the next almost four hours,” Wolf said Friday. “I thought ‘oh, good, it was a worthwhile call’ but I was happy to get out because it’s not nice, you run into spider webs and dirt and it smells crappy and it’s musty and you’re on your belly and you’re dirty. I mean it was work.”

But the work paid off. He used a 24-inch (60-centimeter) snake pole to remove 22 adult rattlesnakes and 59 babies when he first visited the home in the Mayacamas Mountains on Oct. 2. He returned another two times since and collected 11 more snakes. He also found a dead cat and dead possum.

All the snakes were Northern Pacific rattlesnakes, the only venomous snake found in Northern California, he said.

Wolf, who has been rescuing snakes for 32 years and has been bitten 13 times, said he responds to calls about snakes under homes in 17 counties and has seen dozens of them in one place in the wild but never under a home.

He said he releases the rattlesnakes in the wild away from people and sometimes in private land when ranchers request them for pest control.

Wolf said there are plans to return to the house again before the end of the month to see if any more snakes arrived.

“We know it’s a den site already because of the babies, and the amount of females I found,” he said.

Rattlesnakes usually hibernate from October to April and look for rocks to hide under and warm places and will return to the same place year after year. The homeowners didn’t remove any rocks when they built the house, making it an attractive place for the reptiles, Wolf said.

The snakes found the house to be a great place for them because the rocks give them protection but the house, too, gives them protection from being wet during the winter so, it's double insulation for them,” he said.


so many........?!

---

_____________________________________

I reject your reality and substitute my own!

Yikes!!

---

“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in."

Saw that on the news. Not good.

---

Roswell, GA (Atlanta suburb)

Note to self: Remove the rocks in the crawl space when building a home in Sonoma County.

---

Northern California Coast

Quote
steve...
Note to self: Remove the rocks in the crawl space when building a home in Sonoma County.

Not just there, anywhere in the US. Various types of rattlesnakes are found all over the US and their behavior is similar. When my Aunt and Uncle bought their property in the country, they spent the whole first year eliminating rattlesnakes in and around the buildings, an old house and two old barns, there. In a remarkable stroke of ecological awareness, especially for the time and for him, my Uncle wouldn't let us run off or bother the other non-venomous snakes found there, mainly chicken snakes*, corn snakes*, and black racers, because he said if we let them get established, they'd help keep the rattlesnakes away.

Only tangentially related- Build your home's foundation tall enough that you and service people can easily enter and navigate the crawlspace once it's done. A couple of extra courses of cinderblock or taller forms and more concrete won't add much to the cost of the foundation initially, and you'll be so glad you spent the additional money later.

* May be two different names for the same species. During stolen glances as they slithered away after being unintentionally disturbed, they looked basically the same to me anyway.

---

WARNING- If I posted a link in the above message, assume it is at minimum "NSFW- Language". Occasionally you'll be wrong.

Lie to me if you must, but don't lie to me and insult my intelligence in the same sentence.

Resist the Thought Police: George Orwell's book 1984 was meant as a warning, not an instruction manual.

"Political correctness is just intellectual colonialism and psychological fascism for the creation of thought crime" - Steve Hughes

What's my "Super Power"? I can make active threads go stone-dead with a single post. I try to use this power only for good and not for evil but, you know... stuff happens.

I think I'd just let them be unless they managed to get into the plumbing and started crawling out of the toilet or something weird like that.

I think I'd just let them be...


NO. FREAKIN'. WAY.

I'd want a 7.62 minigun with shot shells.

---

I am that Masked Man.

All you can do, is all you can do.

There’s trouble — it's time to play the sound of my people.

Your boos mean nothing to me, I've seen what you cheer for.

Insisting on your rights without acknowledging your responsibilities isn’t freedom, it’s adolescence.

I've been to the edge of the map, and there be monsters.

We are a government of laws, not men.

Everybody counts or nobody counts.

When a good man is hurt,
all who would be called good
must suffer with him.

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

There is no safety for honest men except
by believing all possible evil of evil men.

We don’t do focus groups. They just ensure that you don’t offend anyone, and produce bland inoffensive products. —Sir Jonathan Ive

An armed society is a polite society.
And hope is a lousy defense.

You make me pull, I'll put you down.

I *love* SIGs. It's Glocks I hate.

Quote
freeradical
I think I'd just let them be unless they managed to get into the plumbing and started crawling out of the toilet or something weird like that.

That's the problem: They can climb through holes in the wall cut for pipes or wires into cabinets and other dark places and be waiting there to strike when you reach in with your bare hand.

---

WARNING- If I posted a link in the above message, assume it is at minimum "NSFW- Language". Occasionally you'll be wrong.

Lie to me if you must, but don't lie to me and insult my intelligence in the same sentence.

Resist the Thought Police: George Orwell's book 1984 was meant as a warning, not an instruction manual.

"Political correctness is just intellectual colonialism and psychological fascism for the creation of thought crime" - Steve Hughes

What's my "Super Power"? I can make active threads go stone-dead with a single post. I try to use this power only for good and not for evil but, you know... stuff happens.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2021 12:43AM by Thrift Store Scott.

Yep, them NorCal rattlers can be pesky. One of my childhood pals had a home on Clear Lake, in Lake County, adjacent to Sonoma, and whenever we went out for a hike, we always armed ourselves w/ .22's. Dispatched quite a few snakes over the years, but 90+ was quite a find. Occasionally we'd find a couple on either side of the hiking path, and one, or more would let their discontent w/ visitors be known. Was quite common back in the 1960's & 70's, just about every hiker you came across had a firearm, and I suspect many that weren't obvious had one concealed. Hikers would compare sightings and number of snakeskin wallets made that day. Our goal was not be bitten even once, not 13 times and counting, but kudos to Mr. Wolf for his tenacity.
==

Quote
RAMd®d
I think I'd just let them be...


NO. FREAKIN'. WAY.

I'd want a 7.62 minigun with shot shells.

Every one of those snakes is a worker. Got jobs to do. Put 'em back to work. Interestingly, that's near where the Glass Fire raged devastatingly a couple of years ago.

They weren't on a plane.