Texas-sized surprise: 45 rattlesnakes found underneath house
With warmer temperatures, the rattlesnakes emerge into the open
A Texas homeowner who reported seeing a few snakes under his home actually had dozens of rattlesnakes living beneath his house.
That's according to Big Country Snake Removal, whose workers pulled 45 rattlesnakes from underneath the home near Albany, about 240 kilometres west of Dallas.
The company said on its Facebook page that the homeowner had crawled underneath his home after high winds disrupted his cable television service. The man saw a few snakes, quickly crawled out and contacted the snake removal company, which removed the rattlesnakes last week.
Snakes will begin slithering out from underneath Texas homes as the weather warms up, increasing the risk of snakebites, said Nathan Hawkins, the owner of Big Country Snake Removal.
"They'll start emerging, and then what they're going to do is they're going to start trying to find food. And then they're going to start breeding," Hawkins said. "A lot of people are getting snakes in their yard, and it's because basically the habitat has been destroyed around the housing developments."
Hawkins told Abilene TV station KTXS that his company removes about 2,000 snakes every year.
"Most people get bit when people are trying to harm or harass the snake," Hawkins said.
State wildlife officials say that about 7,000 people are bitten by venomous snakes each year in the United States, but very few bites are fatal. Officials say that on average, one or two people die in Texas each year from a venomous snake bite.