In Case of Emergency
If someone is bitten by a snake, the American Red Cross says to call 9-1-1 immediately and keep the person still and calm, with the injured area lower than the heart. While waiting for help to arrive, wash the bite with soap and water and cover it in a clean, dry dressing. The Red Cross cautions not to apply ice or a tourniquet and not to cut or suction the wound. Don’t try to catch the snake, but Tynes says if you can take a picture of it, that may help emergency personnel.
If a snake showed up at an open house or as your clients were preparing their yard for sale, would you know what to do?
Jerrod Tynes, agent at Monument Realty’s Rockwall office, doesn’t just sell houses; he sells snakes and teaches about them as a college professor of herpetology. He comes from a real estate family and has helped identify and remove many reptiles on building sites or listed properties. “I’ve long been the person that friends and family call to come get something out of their dryer trap, garage, attic, barn, or whatever it is,” Tynes said.
Learn Which Snakes Live Near You
Texas is home to 115 species and subspecies of snakes—more than any other state—and 15 of them are potentially harmful to people: coral snakes, cottonmouths, three kinds of copperhead, and 10 varieties of rattlesnake.
Fortunately, you aren’t going to have all of those in your area. “The best thing to do is know the two to four venomous species that are in your county and be able to recognize those at different ages,” Tynes said. It’s important to know what a snake looks like when it’s young and as an adult, because many snakes change their appearance as they mature. “Young cottonmouths, for example, are banded. They’re not solid black or solid green, like we typically see when they’re adults. And young copperheads have a very bright yellow tail because they use that to lure prey.”
Tynes recommends finding a Facebook snake ID group that covers your area. “There are a lot of really good administrators who monitor those,” he said. “Somebody can snap a picture, upload it to social media, and within seconds might have a pretty accurate identification.” Plus, just scrolling through the posts shows you which snakes are nearby. And it may be reassuring that so many of them are considered harmless.
How Owners Can Make Homes Less Appealing to Snakes
One of the best ways to deal with snakes is to make a property less appealing for them to visit in the first place. Snakes can’t control their internal temperature, so they have to move to warmer or cooler spots as the outside temperature changes. Removing access to snake-friendly shelter can discourage them from lingering on your clients’ property. Pay particular attention to anything stacked against the house or fence that could provide good cover. “A lot of us like to store bricks behind our house that match the house. Well, that’s a really great place for snakes because it’s essentially a concrete insulator. It helps them cool off in the summer, and it stays relatively warm in the winter.
“Around the house, close separations between the roof line and places where they can weasel their way in. If it can fit its head in it, the snake will be able to get in there.”
But the main thing that attracts snakes is rodents, so anything that makes a home hospitable to rats and mice will also encourage the snakes that feed on them. “If you store animal food on the property, that has the potential to bring in mice, and mice are going to attract snakes.”
One thing snakes particularly dislike, Tynes said, is cedar. They can’t stand the smell of it “to the point where you cannot keep captive snakes on cedar bedding, because it will kill them.” He suggests using cedar mulch in flowerbeds and sprinkling a small amount of it around the foundation of a house, if your clients want to discourage snakes.
Jerrod Tynes is happy to help identify snakes. Send a photo to jerrodtynes@monumentstar.com
Do Not Touch
Tynes’s top tip for handling snakes? Don’t. “Most bites occur when someone is trying to pick up the snake or mess with it. You’re putting yourself in more danger, especially if it’s venomous,” he said. That’s even true after the snake is dead. “Let’s say someone kills a copperhead. If I grab that thing wrong and the fangs accidentally puncture the base of its jaw, they’ll go through the jaw and into my hand. I can get envenomed from that snake post-mortem.
“If you don’t know what you’re doing, you don’t want to pick up a snake,” even if it’s nonvenomous, he said. “The Texas rat snake is probably the most likely species that anybody would encounter, and while it’s not venomous, it can certainly draw blood.”
Wait It Out
“If you can leave it alone, leave it alone,” Tynes said. “It’ll be gone within probably 30 minutes.” Snakes are shy and sensitive to vibrations, so they don’t like to be in humans’ way. “They’re more scared of us than we are of them.”
Call For Backup
If you must move the snake, call someone who is experienced with snake removal. “Have a couple of folks in your contact list you could call” so you’ll be ready, Tynes advised. Depending on where you are, police, animal control, or Texas Parks and Wildlife might respond to your call, he said, but it’s also good to find people in your area who are snake enthusiasts. “Most of us that are into reptiles are willing to drop what we’re doing and go save a snake.” Tynes has sometimes responded to posts on the NextDoor app and says local science museums, zoos, colleges, or even high school science departments could also be good resources.
Live and Let Live
All snakes are beneficial. Rat snakes are known as the “farmer’s friend,” but even snakes that don’t help keep the rodent population in check play important roles in their environment. And humans often build right next to or on top of that environment. “We all like to live up against woods or next to a creek. So, with our clients who are in a neighborhood that backs up to something like a forest or desert or park, we see what is called the ‘edge effect’—the line where the two ecosystems cross is going to have the highest propensity to see a variety of different species.” Tynes encourages enjoying that variety from a distance and, whenever possible, giving our snake neighbors the chance to slip away in peace.