Spring Brings Snakes Out of Hills and Into Suburbs

As she stepped out to feed her German shepherd on Wednesday morning, Bette Thomas spotted something dark and semi-coiled beneath her car.

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Unnerved, the Simi Valley woman called to her husband, who took one glance at the diamond-back pattern and called 911.

“We see scorpions and tarantulas all the time up here,” Kevin Thomas said. “But in five years, we’ve never seen a snake up here.”

Within minutes, firefighters arrived, yanked out the 2 1/2-foot rattler and lopped off its head.

“We buried the head in a hole in the back yard,” Thomas said. “I guess I’m going to skin the snake and keep the skin in the garage.”

With the arrival of spring, the snakes have started slithering out of the hills and into residential neighborhoods, prompting distress calls to local authorities.

Animal control officials say they have already dealt with a dozen or so western diamondback and Southern Pacific rattlesnakes this month in eastern Ventura County.

And firefighters at Station 46, which covers the rocky hills north of Simi Valley where the Thomases live, have logged four rattlesnake calls in the past two weeks alone.

“We’re coming into the time of year when they start coming out of the hills,” Fire Capt. Mike Sidlinger said. “When the temperature gets warmer the snakes get more active.”

Two of the station’s calls involved baby rattlesnakes in residential yards near the Simi Hills Golf Course. The third was for a 45-year-old New York man bitten on his left index finger by a rattlesnake.

Not surprisingly, residents who live closest to brushy canyons and open space have the most rattlesnake encounters. For Station 46, it is one of the most common emergencies during the summer. Snake sightings peak in July and August.

“It’s not the worst call we get, but it’s something you need to take care with,” Sidlinger said.

Bruce Richards, manager of Los Angeles Animal Care and Control in Agoura Hills, a Los Angeles County animal shelter, said his employees patrolling Thousand Oaks have averaged about two rattlesnake calls a week during the past month in addition to calls about non-venomous snakes.

“Right now, they’re pretty well balanced between rattlesnakes, gopher (snakes), racing snakes and king snakes,” he said.

Because of the heavy rains this year, Richards said he’s expecting more encounters than usual this summer between rattlesnakes and humans.

With more water and vegetation, both the the rodent and snake populations should boom, he said.

“The rainy weather causes a lot of things to grow, everything from mice to wildflowers and snakes. They all have larger litters,” he said.

The busiest time of day for calls is the early evening. That’s when the rodents that snakes prey on are the most active.

Kathy Jenks, director of the Ventura County Animal Regulation Department, has another theory about this snake season. Because of the rains, she believes rodents will stay farther from houses because they will find enough vegetation in the more isolated areas.

And with the rodents, so go the snakes.

“It’s like the coyotes,” Jenks said, “they all follow their dinner out of the mountains. If there’s enough grass in the hills to keep the rodents there, then the snakes and coyotes will stay there to feed off of them.”

Jenks said residents of Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley and Moorpark are the most frequent callers about snakes.

“It’s where you have people that perhaps haven’t experienced wildlife up close and personal,” she said.

Residents of the Ojai Valley frequently see reptiles, but either ignore them or handle the creatures themselves, Jenks said.

“People in Ojai, they understand. They deal with it,” she said.

Residents who do see a rattlesnake, either in their yard or their homes, are encouraged to call animal control officers who are equipped with special tongs and escape-proof boxes.

Workers for both the Ventura County and Los Angeles County animal control departments release trapped rattlesnakes in wilderness areas away from people and hiking trails, Jenks said.

Snakes that have already bitten an animal or human are captured, killed and taken to the hospital or veterinary clinic.

Ventura County firefighters, however, do not attempt to release snakes back into the wild. They decapitate them.

“Normally, if you leave them alone, they’re not very dangerous,” Sidlinger said. “But if we’re going to handle them, we don’t want to handle them anymore than we have to.

“We usually just hold them long enough for somebody to come along and whack them with a shovel.”