Guy rescues venomous snakes from people's homes in his free time! He told us what you should never do if you're trying to move a rattlesnake
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AnimalsTranscript
00:00Oh sweetie. Oh we got a bit of a problem. That's a big gopher. Can I have him?
00:07Can I have this snake please? Will you sit down? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
00:17You got a slobbery dog bite, but it's not too bad. Wow. Thank you so much. I'm just glad it wasn't a rattlesnake.
00:26Oh my god. No two calls are ever alike. Last year we responded to over 500 calls. Oh my god,
00:31I can't even look at it. Oh yeah, okay good. All right, well. Big rattlesnake by your dog bowl.
00:43Let's see if it's a big rattlesnake.
00:45Wow.
00:54Wow. All right, all right, all right, and we're clear. I've done it for eight years and I started
01:01it by myself. Now we're 22 all trained volunteers. We just do it for the love of snakes in our
01:06community. I work my normal job and then about four o'clock I put my boots on and I'm ready
01:14to rock and roll and wrangle. I jokingly tell my wife this is my midlife crisis. I'm not gonna buy
01:20a Ferrari, but I do like my adrenaline. This is what a busy day in my life is like. This is all
01:26from Labor Day weekend. I have eight Southern Pacific rattlesnakes here, all moved from
01:33various homes in this area. I believe snakes truly are one of nature's underdogs.
01:40Is that a good looking snake? People think that all snakes will go out of their way to hurt you,
01:46that they'll chase you down for miles, and all of that is not true. Hey buddy, you're so sweet.
01:55Snakes are incredibly shy animals. They prefer never to be around humans because to them we're
02:01just huge predators. Hey bud. I get several challenging calls every year. He's just so stuck.
02:12I just don't want to hurt him. The scarier calls always involve them caught in garden netting and
02:19usually they don't survive. That's when the stakes get higher because no matter what I do I have to
02:25use my hands and I have to use cutting tools right next to a rattlesnake's head and it's
02:31incredibly intimidating to know that I'm within striking distance of a snake, but if I don't do it,
02:37it's gonna die. It is a very delicate process because they are basically a long rib cage.
02:46Their ribs are about the size of a fishbone, so if you're grabbing them and forcefully moving them,
02:52you're gonna shatter everything in their ribs. We never touch their head because any animal that
02:58preys on snakes attack their head. Typically we try to grab mid-body because then the snake feels
03:05supported. When I get the snake, that is not where it stops. I then have to take it back to prime
03:12habitat. Snakes move around a very short distance their whole life. If we take them more than about
03:19two square miles from the capture site, they become disoriented and their survival rate drops
03:25to about 50-50. If we weren't doing what we do, most people would either take care of it themselves,
03:39which isn't going to be good, or they're going to call the fire department and their protocol is
03:43they kill all venomous snakes. Any way you cut it, a life is gone. So I know I'm doing something
03:49good. He would have never gotten out of there alive, so that's awesome. The role of a snake
03:56in our environment is they are rodent eaters. Without snakes, they would quickly overrun us.
04:05So you got to kind of allow nature to do its thing. Enjoy them for what they are.
04:11Oh, oh, I guess these are the two siblings that don't much like each other.
04:16All right, break it up. Hey, break it up.