From Priclky Pear to RATTLESNAKES...

[TexasRed]

For everyone who was so helpful on my "Ugh, Prickly Pear" thread - THANK YOU! I have learned so much in a few short days.

Somehow I high jacked my own thread and the discussion wandered off to rattlesnakes. I seem to have my fair share of those too.

I hope it is okay to copy over parts of that thread to here, so the rattlesnake discussion doesn't get lost in a long thread.

Originally Posted by Belfrybat -
Rattlers don't care very much for people, so once you have moved in with cats and dogs, most of the snakes will head elsewhere. You'll have to still be careful, but you probably won't see many of them after a few months. If you have a den under the house, then you'll probably need to gas them out, but your rattlesnake guy should know how to do that.

Reply by TexasRed
I appreciate the info. -I had presumed this was the case as I don't recall there ever being an issue around the house or barns when I was growing up. My sister and I were allowed to freely explore the place and never encountered a snake in all those years. Seems like we were pretty lucky.

Knowing my intent to live on the property, my uncle mentioned gassing the den under the house. Pretty sure he said our snake trapper would do it. The den must be extensive after all these years and all the bounty he has collected

[TexasRed]

Originally Posted by Fordy -
...............Sweetwater , Tx just had their Rattlesnake roundup back in March ! They collect thousands of snake's every year and never seem to run out . , fordy

[TexasRed]

Fordy -
I have heard about that event in Sweetwater over the years, but I have no idea what they do with them all. Or even where they get them. I'll have to read up on that.

[TexasRed]

Originally Posted by Alaska --
The traps are simple. I will search for pics and post. Im getting ready to build a half dozen. 9 out of 10 times I check the traps they are already dead.

We built 60 ft from a den. After gassing a couple dozen out I went to work with the backhoe. We have def knocked the numbers down. When we work around the ranch we almost always carry a sidearm with snake loads. Hate to miss an opp to kill one of the demons.

After my bite took a helio flight to San Antonio. 3 Days 10+ viles of anti venom. two weeks at home on my back.-
Air Evac insurance. If you dont have it get it. $18,000 paid no ?

[TexasRed]

Thanks Alaska -

DH would love to see pics of your traps when you have time to post them. He is determined to get his revenge!

Would you have time to explain the gassing process? Does it just drive them out or does it actually kill them? And where does the backhoe come into the process?

After DH was bitten, we were frequently given the advice to carry a shotgun and a shovel. And get boots, thick leather boots. HaHa

Wow, so sorry about your experience with the rattlesnake bite. That had to be frightening, painful and co$tly. DH was lucky I guess. Only 1 fang penetrated just above his ankle and he was not given the anti-venin. What they originally thought was a "dry bite", indeed wasn't, but the venom load must have been light. Don't get me wrong, he suffered greatly for about 10 days. Crazy swelling and discolorization from toes to upper thigh.

We do not have health insurance of any kind, rather relieved he didn't need the Cro-fab or a transport.

Thanks for sharing so much info.

[Belfrybat]

You pump gas fumes into a den, not the gas itself, using a pump up sprayer and a long piece of tubing. The fumes don't kill the snakes -- just drive them out of their den. You then either catch them to relocate them or kill them.

In some states this is illegal. It's still legal in Texas right now, but a law has been proposed to make it illegal, and it looks like it might pass. <sigh> If the law passes, only licensed exterminators will be able to gas and then only around habited areas. So, if you are going to do it, do it soon.

Once you get the snakes out from under the house, put mothballs down and seal really well around the foundation. Snakes have a strong sense of smell and apparently can be kept away with a variety of products. Here's a link to some of them -- I've never used them myself but would if I had the kind of problem you are having with snakes.
http://www.gemplers.com/snake-repell...150507121733:s

As to the roundup at Sweetwater, I am totally against their practices and consider it inhumane. I won't hesitate to kill a rattlesnake close the house or places I walk, but I don't agree with the wholesale torture and slaughter of any animal. And the rattlers are tortured at the roundup. I know others will disagree with me and that is fine.

[DryHeat]

The fumes don't kill the snakes -- just drive them out of their den. You then either catch them to relocate them or kill them.

In my understanding (from zoology background with some specialty in herpetology), gasoline fumes often do eventually lethal damage to snakes' lungs. They stay alive and visibly functional enough to entertain the sadistic rubes at the Sweetwater "roundup" or similar events and I suppose are safe enough as a meat source, but to think very many would survive after relocation is ridiculous. That Texas would even have a legislative or regulatory debate about banning the practice testifies to how clearly damaging it is. Want an area overrun with rodents? Use gasoline fumes to mess with denning areas, you won't have gopher snakes, racers, etc, locally either.

By the way, it's extremely unlikely that a house would have been built on a den, or that one could be established after its construction. Much more likely is that a snake or two were seen around the crawlspace/ basement and "den under the house" made a good yarn. True dens are established apparently over many thousands of years and utilized by multiple species of snakes from many miles in all directions. Not to say that the shade, cool crawlspace, resident rodents, and so on wouldn't be a place where snakes would settle down during the rest of a year after coming across such favorable conditions.

[TexasRed]

Belfrybat -

When I did an Internet search for "Gassing Rattlesnakes" most of what came up were articles about the proposed ban on the practice, didn't find much explaining the process. So thanks for all the in depth info. It may be my only option. Noticed this legislative debate has been going on for awhile, hope I can get it done beforehand if that's the route I choose.

And yes, I would kill those that came out - or let the trapper take them away if he wanted them. Pretty sure there are plenty elsewhere to keep the species going. I want to believe if we could get rid of the masses under the house, the presence of people, cats & dogs would keep them at bay. I respect them living in the "wilds" of my land, but not under my home!

As to the Roundup at Sweetwater...that's sad to hear they torture them. It's one thing to kill them to protect your family, but inhumane treatment / killing for amusement?! Humans can be horrible creatures sometimes.

[TexasRed]

Originally Posted by DryHeat

....By the way, it's extremely unlikely that a house would have been built on a den, or that one could be established after its construction. Much more likely is that a snake or two were seen around the crawlspace/ basement and "den under the house" made a good yarn. True dens are established apparently over many thousands of years and utilized by multiple species of snakes from many miles in all directions. Not to say that the shade, cool crawlspace, resident rodents, and so on wouldn't be a place where snakes would settle down during the rest of a year after coming across such favorable conditions.

After reading your explination about the effects of gassing on the snakes, it does sound a bit inhumane. Do you know of other options for removing a large "family" of rattlers from under a house? I am open to any & all options - they just have to go.

Whether this is a true den or not, I will have to digress to your training and knowledge. My trapper has referred to it as such, perhaps it is just a reference phrase. The "dwellers" under this famhouse have grown over the course of 35+ years. I have no way of knowing the extent of the population, but the trapper has been taking dozens from the place every year. We never seem to run out. It is possible it is simply a few snakes that reproduce prolifically?

Thanks for sharing your knowledge on the subject. This homestead has become a huge learning center for me.

[Belfrybat]

I don't like the idea of gassing anything, but to get rid of a large number of snakes, it probably is the only way. Just kill any that come out. I'm not sure I agree with DryHeat about the permanent damage, but then again, most snakes are killed pretty soon after being gassed. If you don't want to gas them, I'd suggest calling a professional exterminator to take care of the problem and not ask too many questions.

At the Sweetwater roundup, thousands of snakes are thrown together in a large pit for the two or three days of the event. Many are imported in, so there will be several species of rattlers who naturally fight each other. They are all killed at the end of the event, but two to three days in the pit kill a lot of them anyway, and not quickly.

[DryHeat]

True denning situations may be different for different species in different regions. Many years back there were serious reports of the eastern timber rattlesnake migrating upwards of fifty miles from mountain dens to summer feeding and reproducing territory then back again in the fall. That always seemed nearly unbelievable a distance to me but I don't think I ever saw it clearly refuted. In Florida where I grew up, there were no true dens like that, but eastern diamondbacks and many other herps would shelter in gopher tortoise burrows at all times of the year. I know many Texas true dens existed in rocky talus slopes where at least many hundreds of adult rattlers would emerge in the spring, *but* those have been over-collected or deliberately destroyed to the point they pretty much don't really exist now, not like they used to anyway. *Those* true dens would've been mostly vacant during warm times of the years... the idea is the inhabiting species disperse out to rather distant "hunting grounds" where the adults pop off a few rabbits or packrats each, mate, and drop litters of young. Any place with good living conditions... shelter, some water at least collecting after rains, and rabbit and rodent populations for food.... would have however many snakes the food would support likely to be hanging around, then many more in short-term numbers present briefly when litters of young were born.

Now, take a sort of ramshackle rural property with various outbuildings, rats and mice scavenging stored corn, chicken feed, random garbage even, burrows of said rodents accessing crawl spaces or basement areas of older houses, and that could well be a richer hunting area for various species of snakes than anything they'd historically adapted to over past millennia. Rabbits and smaller rodents like various field mice, desert kangaroo mice, and so on, are generally UNbelievably common in desert cactus and grassy scrub. You just don't see them since they're shy and nocturnal, but they provide food for unwelcome predators even if the human habitation doesn't make much nevermind to their existence one way or the other. OK, so I take a bit of exception to a structure's foundation area being a historical den, but... perhaps some snakes routinely try staying around a rich summer hunting area and when they find it isn't getting freezing cold just stay there overwinter, survive, where their fellows who follow some instinct back to a historical den get the gasoline treatment and are thereafter dead snakes and not much able to continue that tradition...

A main point would be, you need to reduce any attractive *habitat* around any homestead as much as possible. The general principle is that *any* wildlife population fills itself back into a suitable "niche" even if the individuals are killed off unless it's a particularly persistent effort (passenger pigeons, for example). Changing that niche will have more effect than focusing on killing (likely transient) individuals, but of course in the case of a residence you will have to be doing both through time. Don't leave sheltering clutter around, including woodpiles. Do everything you can to keep various rodents at bay. Keep surrounding grass cut short. Seal up the edges of your house so there's no easy access underneath, and that might be a major project (and not simple if rodent burrows extend from well outside to inside basement foundations). Encourage, or at least don't slaughter, other predator species like king snakes, rat snakes, bull snakes, racers, hawks, owls, barn cats, and so on. I would suspect that a repeating process of gassing the foundations of the place could be killing things like bull and king snakes (and king snakes eat rattlers, among many other prey items) as well as rattlers... even if released the harmless ones would likely die from the fumes and therefore not be present the next year as randomly migrating rattlers again find the comfort station you're providing and again drop their litters late summer.

Now, it's pretty easy to ID a rattler, but that said, I've seen a fair number of people think bull snakes, hognoses, etc, are rattlers too, especially when seeing them briefly before they vanish into a hole. That said, my own reaction is that there's a pretty high "bozo likelihood" for any self-styled snake catcher going around squirting gasoline around someone's foundations claiming to be helping you by getting rid of rattlers. Do they discuss how many *harmless* snakes they are seeing and what's happening to them? If they say they're ok and being released, well, that's probably ignorant bull. I have heard of folks collecting snakes for the pet trade using homemade live traps... sort of like aquatic crab or crayfish traps... with funnels on one end leading into a chamber with something like a rat or chick or rabbit kept safely live in an attached wire area (or already dead in the main trap). Finding someone who would do collecting/trapping on your property like that and releasing the harmless species would be a sensible arrow in your quiver reducing rattler problems. (Edit add: come to think, rattlers mostly lie in wait for prey as ambushers so might not explore into a funnel like that anyway...) Btw, I don't think the mothball repellant idea much works, plus as naphtha vaporizes pretty quickly, using it likely would be pretty expensive.

Here's a quick link to a site discussing gas toxicity when used for collecting from gopher tortoise burrows: http://www.livingalongsidewildlife.c...es-gaslaw.html

[Belfrybat]

DryHeat - You seem to know your snakes well. At this point, from what Texas Red has posted, someone is trapping the snakes for her, not gassing them. Since her husband got bit the last time they were at the property and is still recovering, it's a good guess that what is being trapped are rattlers.

My stance on all critters, is if they are not bothering me I let them be. I live at the base of a rocky mesa that has many large dens -- the kind you describe as having hundreds of snakes. But they are let be.--to my knowledge no one "hunts" them. But in the spring when they are on the move, and then again in the fall they become a problem and I do kill them when they cross my property too close to the house. I had one kill a cat last year, and one bit my dog three years ago (he was vaccinated so survived).

I've used mothballs to persuade a skunk to move from under the house, and I've heard it works on snakes, but have no direct experience.

BTW, I live 60 miles from Sweetwater, which is why I spoke about the roundup as I did.

[TexasRed]

Originally Posted by Belfrybat

I don't like the idea of gassing anything, but to get rid of a large number of snakes, it probably is the only way. Just kill any that come out. I'm not sure I agree with DryHeat about the permanent damage, but then again, most snakes are killed pretty soon after being gassed. If you don't want to gas them, I'd suggest calling a professional exterminator to take care of the problem and not ask too many questions.

I thought about this after my earlier reply - if I'm going to kill them anyway, the damage from gassing them is kind of a moot point. Sounds like I need to discuss the gassing process with my trapper, and soon. He likely would not charge me to do it as he has made a fair amount of $ off the snakes from my place. A professional exterminator is a 2nd option, but I bet it would be lots of bucks. Thanks, you are a wealth of info.

Originally Posted by Belfrybat

At the Sweetwater roundup, thousands of snakes are thrown together in a large pit for the two or three days of the event. Many are imported in, so there will be several species of rattlers who naturally fight each other. They are all killed at the end of the event, but two to three days in the pit kill a lot of them anyway, and not quickly.

The Sweetwater Roundup sounds simply horrible! I know it is a big economic event for the town, but geez, do people really enjoy that!?! Egads, I will be sure to NOT ever attend it.

[TexasRed]

Dryheat - Wow, you really know, your herps! If you aren't a professor, you should be. I enjoyed reading your post, learned a lot from it. I appreciate you taking the time to share your vast knowledge on this subject. I completely respect your appreciation of all snake species and your point of view on the ethical treatment of them and their habitats.

There is absolutely no doubt - the snakes in question are indeed rattlers. The trapper can only make money off that species. You know the saying... "If it looks like a rattlesnake, sounds like a rattlesnake - it's a rattlesnake". I have never heard anyone mention any other species of snakes in my area, but doesn't mean they aren't there. They just aren't numerous or popular.

My DH is does not hear well, so he didn't hear the rattler's warning before it struck him. I heard it loud & clear, turned to look - made eye contact with the demon and ran like a scared little girl. LOL Fell down in my attempt to escape, lost my glasses -- looking back NOW, it was rather comical. It surprised me that I reacted with such fight or flight. Primal instinct I suppose. Scared the carp out of me. I am quite used to seeing & hearing one or two in the trap, but never loose and 3 feet from me. My husband was so calm about the whole thing, he should have been the one driving to the ER in town, not me.

Thanks again for your input, this has become a most informative thread.

[Belfrybat]

Humans are hard wired to react negatively to any kind of snake -- I guess it all started with Eve in the garden. Even though I like snakes and don't mind handling them, when I see one in the wild my heart goes to my throat until I realize the snake is non-venomous. I stepped on a bull snake one time and it bit me -- talk about frozen in fear. But as soon as I realized what got me, we both went our ways. Had a bad infection from that bite, so am extra careful now around all snakes.

I know you know this, but running is the worst thing you can do when presented with a snake. A coiled rattler can strike out quite a ways and they are really fast. However standing still takes a LOT of courage. I still believe that once you move in, most of the snakes will head to other parts.

[DryHeat]

Apparently I missed that some sort of live trapping is being done now, if so, that's probably the best thing to continue. Maybe ask if the fellow doing the work could let a few king snakes loose on the property? Unfortunately, most adult snakes wont just hang around a strange area if relocated but will take off looking, evidently, for familiar hunting grounds. I guess if you're in an area with lots of rattlers, it's mostly nature's tip that the habitat is just real good for them. Limit the rodent/rabbit food sources, keep grass/weeds trimmed short and litter cleared away, and be careful walking around. They'll sit still for a day or more in one spot waiting to nail a meal, with heat sensor pits screaming your location and range to them day or night. Sometimes it's a case of "them that has, gets" as to how dense and persistent a population is. I live in an AZ area that generally has them all around but in 25 years I've only seen *one* in maybe a mile radius including a lot of streets that have constant roadkilled king and gopher snakes. And I consider that a blessing, I would *not* like needing to be ultracautious walking around here especially at night.

[Alaska]

We live on a rocky ridge. When we where building I had a local comeover who would be hauling gravel for our driveway and building site. He said that snake den is right here some where. Well it was 60ft from our foundation . We gassed 23 snakes out of it. Fun stuff!! The next week a friend from Alaska who was helping us build came across a mouse nest in a pallet of blocks. he set trot line out with a baby mouse in the opening of the den. Next morning snake on. A nice fat 5 footer.

[DryHeat]

Just to emphasize my point on ID difficulty... that first photo is of a harmless, beneficial bull/ gopher snake. If you didn't leave it alone, you were just encouraging rodents and rattlers over the longer term. As a general guess, that'd be more likely what you'd get by attaching a baby rat to a line, they hunt actively by scent where rattlers sit in one place more often, though they might run on it emerging from a denning location.

[TexasRed]

Belfrybat -

Learn something new everyday. I know not to run from black bears, but had never been told that about rattlers. THANK YOU. I will never forget this advice.

Perhaps you are spot on about the fear of snakes & Eve connection. When I saw the snake, it wasn't coiled - she was on the move. DH was calm, yet he ended up the unlucky one because he was closer to it than my clumsy self. (He is pretty sure he stepped on it and it had already struck him by the time he saw it).

We have a famous Rattlesnake Museum here in town, planning to spend an afternoon there in the near future. Not sure exactly why they call it a "museum", more of an information and learning center. We heard you get free admission for life if you have been bitten.

Alaska - Thanks for the pictures. Those are some brave men messing with those snakes, especially if this is near the den you talked about. Is that one of your traps in the picture? How long ago did you finish building? You previously said you trap a lot of small ones, do you think these are still coming from that den?

Dryheat - Does knowing so much about snakes put you more at ease around them? Relatively speaking, of course. Based on my recent experience, I agree with what Belfrybat said about it being instinct to fear them - at least for women.

I think my first order of business is to find a means to determine just how many are under there. Then we can decide on an eradication plan going forward.

As far as a food source for them... If there are mice and rabbits etc, must just be natural as there is no stock feed kept on the property. Uncle brings any feed for his cows in on an as needed basis. No human food has been there for decades. This is all so very interesting. Good to be learning before I move.


Yikes, all this rattlesnake talk and those pics... I might have nightmares for a few days. Still coming to terms about the whole incident.. I now know why my Dad left me several shotguns.

As always, thanks for the insightful replies everyone.

[Shin]

We heard you get free admission for life if you have been bitten.

Now that's what I call a dubious privilege!