“I get to keep snakes alive that would typically end up with a gunshot wound,” Hawkins said.
Harming the snake doesn’t always work out well for the one doing the harming either.
Isac Mcfadden got a whole lot more than he bargained for when he got up to go to the bathroom on Tuesday morning. Instead walking into the a restroom and going about his business as usual, Mcfadden found a western diamondback rattlesnake crawling out of the toilet.
He quickly informed his mom, who told Isac to go grab a shovel while she called Big Country Snake Removal before killing the snake.
“They’re actually very, very amazing creatures that are really misunderstand,” said Nathan Hawkins, owner of Big Country Snake Removal. “There are irrational fears around them.”
Hawkins removed the snake when he arrived to the house, but his work didn’t end there.
“It’s kind of intuition,” Hawkins said. “If you do this long enough, you kind of understand snakes and what they do during certain times of the year.”
So Hawkins searched the property and it didn’t take long before his suspicions were confirmed. in fact, the first place he looked was the storm cellar, in which 13 rattlesnakes were gathered in the corner.
His next stop was under the house. Crawling on his hands and knees, Hawkins discovered 10 more rattlesnakes.
“With rattlesnakes, western diamondbacks in particular, they’re real communal animals during cooler months,” Hawkins explained. “They tend to live together in dens.”
This whole ordeal sounds like something out of a nightmare – a house infested with rattlesnakes sounds like the opposite of fun.
24 snakes sounds like a ridiculous amount to find at one house, but Hawkins says he’s used to it. He’s caught hundreds of snakes over the past year since opening his snake removal business.
Hawkins prefers to keep the snakes and people free from harm if possible, saying to always leave a snake alone and call an expert if someone encounters one.
“I would say 90 percent of snake bites occur when someone’s trying to harm the snake,” Hawkins said.
