Re: Snakes in a basement

Posted by LarryT on January 16, 2011 at 10:35:26 from (68.35.57.27):

In Reply to: Snakes in a basement posted by andy r on January 16, 2011 at 08:17:32:

As a 20 year Pest Control veteran, I can tell you that for the most part the repellents described are mostly ineffective. There are only about 4 ways of dealing with snakes and you have to use all 4.
1. Exclusion. Your on the right track with sealing the access to your basement areas. You mentioned sealing your basement foundation and stem walls, but I have seen snakes burrow as deep as 13 feet to gain access to a place of harborage. You need to find the access points from the inside. I don't know if you can get them there but what I do is once I find the opening I use a colored smoke grenade and pop it off in the opening, seal it off form the onside and find out where the smoke comes up on the outside. Found an opening almost 20 feet from the house under a wood pile one time. So to exclude them you have to find out where they are getting in and take care of that first.
2. Attractants. What is attracting them? Food? Heat? Water? Find out what they are after and remove it. This time of year I have found that both heat and prey are usually the attractants.
Not much you can do about the heat except use it to your advantage and trap them. a heating pad set on low and a funnel trap have worked the best for me. The funnel trap is similar to a lobster trap. I also like to use a live rodent as an additional attractant.
3. When it comes to repellents be careful that you don't drive them into areas of the house that are occupied buy you and your family or areas that are even less accessible like wall cavities and attic spaces. As I briefly mentioned, repellents are very ineffective. Now I didn't say they don't work, I just said they don't work well and can cause other problems if the pest is already in the house.
4. Removing the attractant and changing the environment. This is usually the most effective way of getting rid of them. Rodent control is easier than controlling the snake. Get rid of the mice and the snake will leave. Now with heat as the attractant you have another problem. A snake being cold blooded will just go into hibernation when it gets cold so trying to freeze it out will only cause it to hibernate or move in with you. In the spring they come out and you still have the problem. But if you can use the heating pad technique to trap them you will find it effective if the warmth is the attractant. I personally prefer the snakes to the rodents. We have a lot of guarder snakes, gopher snakes, and ribbon snakes. We as a species, have an inherent fear of snakes because for the most part people do not poses the knowledge to tell the difference between the poisonous and the harmless, so we fear them all. But usually if you have a number of harmless snakes in the area you won't find any poisonous there. There is a lot of material available out there but I have yet to find any tried and true technique for curing your problem. Good luck to you with this, LarryT

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