I was watching a show on TV about people that hunt Rattlesnakes for venom research. It brought back some memories of my experiences with snakes in animal control.
My very first snake call was way back in 1983. I was still a very new Animal Control Officer working in the county area of Chino Hills California. It's all incorporated and a big city now, back then it was mainly some tracts of homes surrounded by dairy farms and open fields and hills.
I got to the house that had called and found that the snake was still curled up right by the back patio sliding door. Aspects of what happened next are why I can recall this call so clearly. I had not had any experience with snakes before and this was still years before millions would see snakes all time with people like the Crocodile Hunter. I thought I knew important facts about snakes like only Rattlesnakes are poisonous (not entirely true), Rattlesnakes always had rattles (also not entirely true), and all snakes are mute and make no sounds except for the rattle of the Rattlesnake (really wrong!) As I approached this snake it remained curled up. I took my control stick and as the stick got close to it the snake let out this incredibly loud hiss. Almost scared the you know what out of me! I was completely surprised by the volume of the hiss from such a relatively small animal, along with the fact it wasn't supposed to be making any sounds at all!
Those early days in animal control, it was often figuring out and McGuyver'ing a way to handle the call. Training was just about non existent, and S.B. County supplied equipment was just a truck, a leash, a control stick, a pair of heavy welders gloves and a "Thomas Guide" San Bernardino County map book. Specialized equipment was still years away like snake tongs to help pick up snakes.
So, background covered, back to the call. I was in no way going to pick up the snake with my hands. I was told that if the snake had a long tail it wasn't poisonous, so this snake was a Gopher Snake. Generally the same colors as a Rattlesnake and often mistaken for them, this one was about 3 feet long. I tried to chase it into a bucket but it just went around it. So I got my control stick (the aluminum pole with the adjustable cable in it) and thought I'd try to catch the snake with it. I made the loop pretty small and was able to get the snake to crawl through it, as it did I carefully tightened the cable until the snake was caught. So now I had it, what was I going to do with it?
I pride myself in the fact that I never killed any snake at a call. Most everyone else would pin the snake and use a shovel to kill it. I did know that snakes eat mice and other rodents and so are beneficial so I didn't want to do any killing I didn't need to.
I took the snake and put it loose in the back cages of the truck I was driving. My thought was to take it out and let it go in another less populated area. Had a lot of them to choose from then. I figured it would stay comfy in the truck for a while and I'd just open the cage and 'shoo' it out keeping a distance. I found a nice deserted area and when I opened the back cage door, nothing came out. When I looked inside the snake had crawled through several of the wholes in the wire mesh that separated the cages. It was stuck by threading itself through three of the diamond shaped holes. It went through until it got stuck by its body getting too large, yet couldn't back up because its scales prevented going backwards because they'd hit the wire.
What I did here was take about a hour and a half and with my pliers, carefully bent the mesh around the snake body until it broke and that then gave the snake its ability to back up. Only nicked him or her a little but eventually the snake was loose and I got it out and it took off into the tall weeds.
I can't remember how many snake calls over the years I did. It was A LOT!
In those early years snake calls were just every once in a while for everybody. Later on as the west end cities like Rancho Cucamonga expanded more and more taking out the habitat like the vineyards and orange groves and building more housing tracts into the foothills late spring and early summer became an annual 'snake season' for those areas. Almost always Gopher Snakes, over the years I got snakes out of dishwashers, out of stoves, out of many rooms of houses, out of kitchen drawers, garages, even got two out of cars over the years!
I remember one call, in a pretty new over $500,000 dollar home in a expensive tract in the north end of Rancho Cucamonga. A gated community, when I got to the house the snake was in a drawer of the kitchen island. It was a small snake in the silverware drawer. The residents had opened the drawer to get something and all but passed out at seeing this snake there. I got the snake and put it in a paper sack folded and stapled to hold it until I could release it. Then I thought I'd check to see how it got in so they could get the entryway blocked to prevent it from happening again. When I pulled out the drawers to look at the inside of the island, I was really shocked to see that in this half million dollar house, under the island was never finished! I was looking at dirt and rocks under it. No floor, no nothing! Just pipes to the island sink and open space. They were lucky this snake was all that had found its way in!
As the years passed I got pretty confident in handling snakes, I started to bring ways to transport them safely for me as well as them. I liked the burlap sack. I'd put the snake in the bag and bungee cord it and hang it on the cage wall. Worked with Rattlesnakes too!
A call I went to was to help a co-worker who was terrified of any kind of snake or lizard. He'd gotten a call for a snake and located it in the bushes near the house that had called. It was early spring so still really cool temp wise, always good for picking up snakes. I got there and pretty quickly got it. By then I could catch the snake with the control stick but if docile, and NOT a Rattlesnake, I could hold it in my hand to put it in the container to transport it. I'd never seen a snake like this, but by what we knew it wasn't supposed to be a dangerous type. I took it to the animal shelter since there were people there that liked snakes or could send it to a local herpetology group. I later found out the snake had been an illegal import of a highly deadly snake from Africa. It had rear fangs and had it bitten me I would probably have died because of its type and venom.
I found out that small baby Rattlesnakes have no rattles but do have nubs and will bite! I also came across several adult Rattlers over the years that had lost or broken their rattle 'pack'. A call I went to was such a snake, it had bitten their Husky dog in the face while the dog tried to get the snake in a woodpile. Since it didn't have it's rattles I never could find it. The dog owners spent a couple of thousand dollars trying to save their dog but the bite had been too close to the brain and after a few weeks it still died.
That was the thing too, the legend is snakebite always equaled you're dead. Can be true but not always was, you would probably loose that hand, foot, or whatever part got bitten though!
If you've never heard how a rattlesnake's rattle sounds check for a audio file on-line to hear one. It doesn't sound like they usually do in TV shows. They always sounded more like a loud buzz to me, only a rattle kind of sound if the snake wasn't defending or preparing to strike. Just curled up waiting to see what you were going to do!
Biggest snake I ever got was a Gopher snake about 8 feet long in Lucerne Valley. Smallest was about 5 inches and I don't remember now where that baby snake was from. I remember going to a call to help Stacy in the foothills above San Bernardino. It was a snake in their garage and when I got there I got it for Stacy and it was a Bull snake about 6 feet long and really fat at about 5 inches across. Most were always thin unless they'd recently eaten.
Gopher Snakes, Rattlesnakes, Red Racers, those were the ones I most often picked up, in order.
Up here I haven't seen any snakes. There are supposed to be Garter snakes in North Idaho but I haven't seen them.
I was bitten twice by Gopher snakes over the years. Luckily, never even close to being bitten by a Rattlesnake. But picking a Rattlesnake up was very nerve racking! I'd say close to the tension of having to get a skunk caught in the wrong type of cage trap.
First Gopher snake bite was because I didn't yet wear lightweight work gloves. After I started to wear gloves I wore them every time I dealt with any animal for the extra protection. This was when I was feeling a bit confident in my snake handling abilities, you know the time you're most likely to get hurt! I got the snake and thought it was relatively docile, wrong. I was holding it in my hand but I didn't have it close enough to it's head so it just reached around and bit me by my right thumb. It didn't hurt but several seconds after it bit, little bits of blood made two U-shapes connecting at the open end. Second time was years later but the same scenario. This time though the snake reached around and bit me on the wrist just past my glove!
I remember the time I was called out at two in the morning because the Sheriff's department had been called out for a snake call in the county area of Apple Valley, about 40 minutes away. As I always did on those during the night calls, I'd monitor the Sheriff's band on our radio. Often it would save me a trip as many calls were canceled long before I could get there. Same thing happened on this one, I was listening and heard the deputies on site call dispatch to' cancel animal control' as a deputy there would handle it himself. OK, I confirm with the Sheriff's dispatcher they don't need me and get turned around and am heading back home. A little while later I hear on the radio that the deputy had missed in his attempt to kill the Rattlesnake with a shovel and had been bitten by the snake! They wound up taking him by helicopter down to Loma Linda Hospital. If you've ever seen the shows on Discovery Channel or Animal Planet on snake bites, the place they usually film at is the hospital in Loma Linda venon's section.
Due to the day and night time heat, we'd regularly get snake calls all hours of the night during the summer. I often wondered why in the heck someone would be out walking around their place at 2, 3, or 4 in the morning to even be out and see the snake! Sometimes people would have sliding window/doors with no or damaged screens on them. As the snake would be crawling around the outside of the house it would very easily just crawl right in trough the open door! But most people didn't realize that a 3 foot long snake often could easily squeeze through an opening the size of a quarter!
OTHER NEWS
Yesterday was Fathers day and I sent salutations to my father through his Facebook page.
Sandy called, she was in Las Vegas on a pre-arranged trip with friends. She was telling me about a TV show she'd seen about a subject I used to tease her about often when she was younger, would a Killer Whale eat a human? Her stand was no, a Killer Whale would not! She's seen a show on PBS in Las Vegas that morning that was about a village where the inhabitants and the local Killer Whale population had a working relationship going. The people would be in the water with the whales and they never killed anyone, case closed.
All I could tell her was when she's going to jump into the water in a wetsuit and try to swim up and pet a Killer Whale in the wild, just make sure somebody has a video camera!
Tomorrow (6-23) Sandy has to fly to India until next Sunday to check on the progress of a job where a rich person in India is building a 26 story 'house' for him and his family. She said its a 30 hour flight and she'll miss receiving some awards for another project she'd worked on. She'll still get the awards, just won't be around for getting them at the ceremony.
Laura was involved in a car crash on Friday. A guy going too fast in rainy conditions, ran a stoplight and plowed into several vehicles including her work truck. She's OK but she got hurt more from the air bag going off then the actually hit to her truck.
Sean's doing good in San Diego.
Well, till next time! Tad
My very first snake call was way back in 1983. I was still a very new Animal Control Officer working in the county area of Chino Hills California. It's all incorporated and a big city now, back then it was mainly some tracts of homes surrounded by dairy farms and open fields and hills.
I got to the house that had called and found that the snake was still curled up right by the back patio sliding door. Aspects of what happened next are why I can recall this call so clearly. I had not had any experience with snakes before and this was still years before millions would see snakes all time with people like the Crocodile Hunter. I thought I knew important facts about snakes like only Rattlesnakes are poisonous (not entirely true), Rattlesnakes always had rattles (also not entirely true), and all snakes are mute and make no sounds except for the rattle of the Rattlesnake (really wrong!) As I approached this snake it remained curled up. I took my control stick and as the stick got close to it the snake let out this incredibly loud hiss. Almost scared the you know what out of me! I was completely surprised by the volume of the hiss from such a relatively small animal, along with the fact it wasn't supposed to be making any sounds at all!
Those early days in animal control, it was often figuring out and McGuyver'ing a way to handle the call. Training was just about non existent, and S.B. County supplied equipment was just a truck, a leash, a control stick, a pair of heavy welders gloves and a "Thomas Guide" San Bernardino County map book. Specialized equipment was still years away like snake tongs to help pick up snakes.
So, background covered, back to the call. I was in no way going to pick up the snake with my hands. I was told that if the snake had a long tail it wasn't poisonous, so this snake was a Gopher Snake. Generally the same colors as a Rattlesnake and often mistaken for them, this one was about 3 feet long. I tried to chase it into a bucket but it just went around it. So I got my control stick (the aluminum pole with the adjustable cable in it) and thought I'd try to catch the snake with it. I made the loop pretty small and was able to get the snake to crawl through it, as it did I carefully tightened the cable until the snake was caught. So now I had it, what was I going to do with it?
I pride myself in the fact that I never killed any snake at a call. Most everyone else would pin the snake and use a shovel to kill it. I did know that snakes eat mice and other rodents and so are beneficial so I didn't want to do any killing I didn't need to.
I took the snake and put it loose in the back cages of the truck I was driving. My thought was to take it out and let it go in another less populated area. Had a lot of them to choose from then. I figured it would stay comfy in the truck for a while and I'd just open the cage and 'shoo' it out keeping a distance. I found a nice deserted area and when I opened the back cage door, nothing came out. When I looked inside the snake had crawled through several of the wholes in the wire mesh that separated the cages. It was stuck by threading itself through three of the diamond shaped holes. It went through until it got stuck by its body getting too large, yet couldn't back up because its scales prevented going backwards because they'd hit the wire.
What I did here was take about a hour and a half and with my pliers, carefully bent the mesh around the snake body until it broke and that then gave the snake its ability to back up. Only nicked him or her a little but eventually the snake was loose and I got it out and it took off into the tall weeds.
I can't remember how many snake calls over the years I did. It was A LOT!
In those early years snake calls were just every once in a while for everybody. Later on as the west end cities like Rancho Cucamonga expanded more and more taking out the habitat like the vineyards and orange groves and building more housing tracts into the foothills late spring and early summer became an annual 'snake season' for those areas. Almost always Gopher Snakes, over the years I got snakes out of dishwashers, out of stoves, out of many rooms of houses, out of kitchen drawers, garages, even got two out of cars over the years!
I remember one call, in a pretty new over $500,000 dollar home in a expensive tract in the north end of Rancho Cucamonga. A gated community, when I got to the house the snake was in a drawer of the kitchen island. It was a small snake in the silverware drawer. The residents had opened the drawer to get something and all but passed out at seeing this snake there. I got the snake and put it in a paper sack folded and stapled to hold it until I could release it. Then I thought I'd check to see how it got in so they could get the entryway blocked to prevent it from happening again. When I pulled out the drawers to look at the inside of the island, I was really shocked to see that in this half million dollar house, under the island was never finished! I was looking at dirt and rocks under it. No floor, no nothing! Just pipes to the island sink and open space. They were lucky this snake was all that had found its way in!
As the years passed I got pretty confident in handling snakes, I started to bring ways to transport them safely for me as well as them. I liked the burlap sack. I'd put the snake in the bag and bungee cord it and hang it on the cage wall. Worked with Rattlesnakes too!
A call I went to was to help a co-worker who was terrified of any kind of snake or lizard. He'd gotten a call for a snake and located it in the bushes near the house that had called. It was early spring so still really cool temp wise, always good for picking up snakes. I got there and pretty quickly got it. By then I could catch the snake with the control stick but if docile, and NOT a Rattlesnake, I could hold it in my hand to put it in the container to transport it. I'd never seen a snake like this, but by what we knew it wasn't supposed to be a dangerous type. I took it to the animal shelter since there were people there that liked snakes or could send it to a local herpetology group. I later found out the snake had been an illegal import of a highly deadly snake from Africa. It had rear fangs and had it bitten me I would probably have died because of its type and venom.
I found out that small baby Rattlesnakes have no rattles but do have nubs and will bite! I also came across several adult Rattlers over the years that had lost or broken their rattle 'pack'. A call I went to was such a snake, it had bitten their Husky dog in the face while the dog tried to get the snake in a woodpile. Since it didn't have it's rattles I never could find it. The dog owners spent a couple of thousand dollars trying to save their dog but the bite had been too close to the brain and after a few weeks it still died.
That was the thing too, the legend is snakebite always equaled you're dead. Can be true but not always was, you would probably loose that hand, foot, or whatever part got bitten though!
If you've never heard how a rattlesnake's rattle sounds check for a audio file on-line to hear one. It doesn't sound like they usually do in TV shows. They always sounded more like a loud buzz to me, only a rattle kind of sound if the snake wasn't defending or preparing to strike. Just curled up waiting to see what you were going to do!
Biggest snake I ever got was a Gopher snake about 8 feet long in Lucerne Valley. Smallest was about 5 inches and I don't remember now where that baby snake was from. I remember going to a call to help Stacy in the foothills above San Bernardino. It was a snake in their garage and when I got there I got it for Stacy and it was a Bull snake about 6 feet long and really fat at about 5 inches across. Most were always thin unless they'd recently eaten.
Gopher Snakes, Rattlesnakes, Red Racers, those were the ones I most often picked up, in order.
Up here I haven't seen any snakes. There are supposed to be Garter snakes in North Idaho but I haven't seen them.
I was bitten twice by Gopher snakes over the years. Luckily, never even close to being bitten by a Rattlesnake. But picking a Rattlesnake up was very nerve racking! I'd say close to the tension of having to get a skunk caught in the wrong type of cage trap.
First Gopher snake bite was because I didn't yet wear lightweight work gloves. After I started to wear gloves I wore them every time I dealt with any animal for the extra protection. This was when I was feeling a bit confident in my snake handling abilities, you know the time you're most likely to get hurt! I got the snake and thought it was relatively docile, wrong. I was holding it in my hand but I didn't have it close enough to it's head so it just reached around and bit me by my right thumb. It didn't hurt but several seconds after it bit, little bits of blood made two U-shapes connecting at the open end. Second time was years later but the same scenario. This time though the snake reached around and bit me on the wrist just past my glove!
I remember the time I was called out at two in the morning because the Sheriff's department had been called out for a snake call in the county area of Apple Valley, about 40 minutes away. As I always did on those during the night calls, I'd monitor the Sheriff's band on our radio. Often it would save me a trip as many calls were canceled long before I could get there. Same thing happened on this one, I was listening and heard the deputies on site call dispatch to' cancel animal control' as a deputy there would handle it himself. OK, I confirm with the Sheriff's dispatcher they don't need me and get turned around and am heading back home. A little while later I hear on the radio that the deputy had missed in his attempt to kill the Rattlesnake with a shovel and had been bitten by the snake! They wound up taking him by helicopter down to Loma Linda Hospital. If you've ever seen the shows on Discovery Channel or Animal Planet on snake bites, the place they usually film at is the hospital in Loma Linda venon's section.
Due to the day and night time heat, we'd regularly get snake calls all hours of the night during the summer. I often wondered why in the heck someone would be out walking around their place at 2, 3, or 4 in the morning to even be out and see the snake! Sometimes people would have sliding window/doors with no or damaged screens on them. As the snake would be crawling around the outside of the house it would very easily just crawl right in trough the open door! But most people didn't realize that a 3 foot long snake often could easily squeeze through an opening the size of a quarter!
OTHER NEWS
Yesterday was Fathers day and I sent salutations to my father through his Facebook page.
Sandy called, she was in Las Vegas on a pre-arranged trip with friends. She was telling me about a TV show she'd seen about a subject I used to tease her about often when she was younger, would a Killer Whale eat a human? Her stand was no, a Killer Whale would not! She's seen a show on PBS in Las Vegas that morning that was about a village where the inhabitants and the local Killer Whale population had a working relationship going. The people would be in the water with the whales and they never killed anyone, case closed.
All I could tell her was when she's going to jump into the water in a wetsuit and try to swim up and pet a Killer Whale in the wild, just make sure somebody has a video camera!
Tomorrow (6-23) Sandy has to fly to India until next Sunday to check on the progress of a job where a rich person in India is building a 26 story 'house' for him and his family. She said its a 30 hour flight and she'll miss receiving some awards for another project she'd worked on. She'll still get the awards, just won't be around for getting them at the ceremony.
Laura was involved in a car crash on Friday. A guy going too fast in rainy conditions, ran a stoplight and plowed into several vehicles including her work truck. She's OK but she got hurt more from the air bag going off then the actually hit to her truck.
Sean's doing good in San Diego.
Well, till next time! Tad
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