A Scary Encounter Inspired Her to Become a Rattlesnake Wrangler. Now, She's Dedicated Her Life to Saving Them (Exclusive)
Danielle Wall has made a name for herself in Joshua Tree as a local rattlesnake wrangler. After encountering one on the road in 2018, she taught herself about the species and how to handle them
While California's animal control laws require captured rattlesnakes to be euthanized, Wall sends them away from properties without harming them. She does not charge for her services at all
Wall supplements her reptile management volunteer work with paid gigs handling animals on TV and film sets, and she's also gained a following of over 116,000 on social mediaIt was August 2018. Danielle Wall was in college at the time and trying to make ends meet. She worked jobs at a wedding venue and took tutoring gigs to pull in some cash. She was driving to her home in Joshua Tree, Calif., after yet another long day when something in the middle of the road made her suddenly swerve her Honda Civic.
Sprawled out in the center of the street was a rattlesnake, something Wall had never seen in her two years living out in the desert. She didn't know much about snakes, but she knew she didn't want to crush it. Wall maneuvered her car directly over the reptile so the tires would pass by it on either side, but when she looked back, the rattlesnake wasn't moving.
"I pulled over, and I was like, 'Oh God, did I kill it?' Because it was just laying there, not moving, not doing anything," she recalls to PEOPLE almost seven years later. But looking at it from outside of her car, she realized it was alive.
With no cell service or any experience with snakes, Wall was scared. Terrified, in fact, but not paralyzingly so. Her empathy for the living creature took over. She broke off a stick from a nearby bush and returned to the road to poke the snake. After a jab, the rattlesnake took off, slithering away from the road and out of danger.
"That's the grand story," says Wall, now 31. The next chapter of her life unfolded from there, the moment she simply poked a rattlesnake on the road. She's since dedicated herself to safely removing rattlesnakes from dangerous places, where they may be threatened or where they may pose a threat to others. In most scenarios, Wall explains, the latter only occurs after the former.
"People think they're aggressive, but on paper, they have the same behavioral defenses as feral kittens. And a feral kitten's not going to attack a human or bite a human for no reason," she tells PEOPLE. "But if you trap it, the feral kitten's going to try to run past you before jumping on you. And the snakes are all the same ... Most bites are completely preventable."
Of course, Wall didn't know that back in 2018. But when she got home after her first rattlesnake encounter in the round, she decided to familiarize herself with the species and find out how others handle such encounters.
Her search yielded chilling information, findings that didn't sit right with Wall at all. California animal control's typical protocol was — and still is, legally — to euthanize found and caught rattlesnakes. The violence of it all got to her. A born nature-lover, Wall was appalled to learn that people were killing wildlife out of fear.
Wall wasn't just going to sit with the horror. She felt compelled to fix the problem. "I was like, 'How hard could it be? I'll teach myself or reach out, see if anyone will teach me,'" the SoCal resident recalls.
"I found no resources. And then the few people I did reach out to that answered were like, 'No,'" says Wall. "One guy said, 'Sit down, little girl, you're going to get hurt.'"
Rejection after rejection, Wall resolved to just put herself out there. She educated herself on reptile husbandry and rattlesnake anatomy, reading research published by the likes of Loma Linda Medical University's herpetology department. And she watched local Facebook groups, waiting for a post by someone looking for help with a rattlesnake.
Her interest was piqued by one woman's post about a snake on her property. In her caption, she specified, "I don't want it killed." The replies completely dismissed the woman's wishes.
"Out of the 30 comments saying, 'Kill it,' I'm the one comment saying, 'I've moved one off the road before. I've got a stick and a bucket. Can I come try?'" Wall remembers. The woman agreed, and Wall was able to successfully, safely send off a second snake.
It wasn't just how easy it was for her to catch and release the snake. It was seeing how happy and calm the woman was as Wall helped her out. "That was the pivot of, 'I can f------ do this,'" says Wall. "And then it built up from there."
At first, she expected it to be a "little bit of a side thing," Wall explains, especially since she doesn't charge for her rattlesnake wrangling service at all. It's donation-based, and she was lucky enough to nab a tire sponsor after she once caught a snake for a man who owns a tire company. He gave her a $2,000 set of tires to help her drive the lengths of Joshua Tree.
The new tires came at the perfect time, too, because it didn't take long before Wall's phone was constantly blowing up with requests for her to wrangle on various properties across the desert. COVID hit during year three of her business, and with so many people staying home — and plenty of city folk heading out to quieter Joshua Tree residences — they started to notice more and more snakes.
"The population was getting higher. The building rates were exponential, just so many houses being built. So a lot of territory for the snakes was demolished," she explains to PEOPLE.
That's not to say there were never any roaming snakes to start with, though. Snakes are all over the desert, hiding in plain sight, especially in Joshua Tree National Park, where people regularly hike and hang out without noticing any vipers. In fact, Wall nods to their widespread presence to illustrate just how mild these creatures really are.
"There's no such thing as an aggressive rattlesnake towards people, because if they were aggressive, no one could live in Joshua Tree. It'd be like the movie Zombieland, but snakes," she says. "If the snakes actually decided to say, 'F--- people,' they could run everyone out of this desert."
Wall continues, "They're plentiful out here, but they're so peaceful and they don't ambush us. It's nothing like that. People just think, 'Oh, well, I don't see them. So, they're not there.'"
During lockdown, her phone started ringing nonstop. She was constantly dropping everything to go visit properties and remove visiting reptiles. It got to the point where she could no longer keep up with her busy lifestyle, balancing school and full-time paid work. She dropped out of college and pointed all her efforts toward snake wrangling.
In place of a steady income, she picks up odd jobs on the side, usually cleaning houses. She used to offer classes on rattlesnakes, charging people $150 to attend a session, but wrangling got in the way of that, too.
"I'd book an hour-and-a-half class, then 10 minutes in, I'd get a snake call. I send my assistant, and then two minutes later, I get another call," she says. "It got to the point where the anxiety I was getting trying to schedule classes to make money was making it so I couldn't go save the snakes, which is my whole purpose."
Legally, she's not able to officially turn her work into a business, but even if she could charge for rattlesnake wrangling, Wall says she wouldn't. She looked at non-profit options, but the California Department of Fish and Wildlife doesn't grant third-party permits.
She's come to terms with the unsteady income, but even with acceptance, Wall admits that times do get tough.
"I struggle financially, big time. People have no idea. They have no f------ clue, and maybe I should be a bit more transparent about it," she tells PEOPLE. "I've had my electricity cut off because I'm more worried about making sure there's gas in my car to go and get snakes instead of paying my own bills."
In place of money, however, Wall soon gained something else: notoriety. "You post one picture of a small tattooed chick holding a rattlesnake," she chuckles, admitting, "It got a lot of attention, and I didn't anticipate that."
Wall's Instagram page, @High_Desert_Dani, has over 116,000 followers. The attention has paid off in a literal sense, too. She works in the entertainment business every so often, with sets hiring her to handle snakes featured in film and television.
"I can charge upwards of a thousand dollars a day. So, if I get two or three really good set gigs over the year, it'll help me make my bills," Wall explains. "But I'm still in the red every year on terms of upkeep on just the snake stuff."
It's an uphill battle, but it's worth it to the California native. She wants to see the state's animal control laws evolve toward a more humane approach. Other parts of the country don't require the vipers to be killed when caught. Elsewhere, there are wildlife facilities that offer rattlesnake relocation training classes and seminars.
"There's other states that are already doing this, and that's how California should be. It shouldn't be that it is just me," she says.
Wall admits that she gets anxiety doing publicity for herself, whether she's speaking to the press, appearing on a screen or posting for her substantial social media audience. She pushes on because she knows more attention will help her change her state's Fish and Game official protocol for handling rattlesnakes.
"When I did some research, that's how a lot of other states ended up getting laws changed: Publicity," she notes. "Enough of the community was in an uproar over the killing. They were able to push for each individual county and eventually the state to uphold those laws."
Sometimes her means of advocacy is misread. People challenge her motives. "I get people online that are like, 'You do this for the fame and money,'" says Wall. "And I love that people do question me, because there are people that claim to do good and they're evil. So I always say, 'Please question me.' I love to be able to prove that I'm doing this for the right reasons over and over and over."
She can sense when someone is in the rattlesnake wrangling business for the wrong reasons. Those people usually wave the bright red flag of a competitive attitude.
"People are like, 'Well, Danielle, you must not want more snake wranglers coming out and taking your job.' I'm like, 'What do you mean f------ taking my job?'" Wall says. "There's always snakes to save. I could use 10 helpers that I could trust, and I would be so grateful."
In Wall's experience, men can be particularly competitive with her, though the snake wrangling is generally a male-dominated field. Wall has had her fair share of sexist remarks since that first "Sit down, little girl." But she's also learned that snake biting is a male-focused area, too. While she was researching the reptiles, she learned that hospital data largely shows snake bites on men 75% to 80% of the time.
"There's a guy at Loma Linda [University] that does the presentations and lectures and seminars on snakes, and he's like, 'The two main reasons for rattlesnake bites are testosterone and booze,'" Wall explains. "And he is a middle-aged man, and he has no shame of being like, 'Men are dumb sometimes.' Because that's how it is in the bite world."
Not unlike the rattlesnakes that lash out, Wall calls men the "number one" thing that scares her. But having grown up with brothers, it's not that she's intimidated, nor that she hates men in general.
"It's more so the fact that these other male snake wranglers have to be better than me," she says. "If that's your goal, you're in it for the wrong reasons. Because I didn't get into this to be the best, I got into it to have a purpose in life."
That really is how it boils down. Rattlesnakes came into Wall's life when she needed something bigger to guide her, something that she could do and feel good doing. Somehow, the timing has always made sense; in addition to her advocacy motive, these reptiles continue to pull her out of her lowest lows.
One December saw Wall deeply depressed. She was going through a "pretty gnarly" breakup, and snakes rarely come out in the winter months. Without wrangling requests on her phone, she really couldn't bring herself up and out of bed. Over the course of months, she lost weight and fell further into that dark place.
On the other side of winter, the sun warmed up the desert again. Snakes started to come out of hiding, and Wall's sense of happiness returned with the snake calls.
"It was a very pivotal moment of just figuring out what makes me happy, why I do what I do, why I am the way I am," she recalls to PEOPLE, with an emotional catch to her voice. "I didn't realize how much the snakes actually gave me the purpose to get up ... I saved snakes and they saved me."
Read the original article on People
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNET
an hour ago
- CNET
Stop Cooking These 10 Foods in Your Instant Pot
The Instant Pot is an incredibly convenient appliance, especially in the summer when you don't want to spend a lot of time in front of the stove. It offers multiple cooking options and features, but there are limits to its power, and some foods don't fare well in the machine. To save you time, money and having to eat something awful, we've devised this list of foods you should never cook in the Instant Pot. Here are 10 food items and recipes you should never cook in your Instant Pot. And for more cooking tips, check out nine cooking hacks that actually work, why you might be ruining your chef's knife and the top slow cooker mistakes to avoid. Seafood Shrimp is best cooked on the grill or in a sauté pan. David Watsky/CNET In general, seafood such as fish, oysters, shrimp, mussels and clams is just too delicate for pressure cooking and slow cooking modes. They are foods that are meant to be cooked quickly at just the right temperature, which is hard to do with an Instant Pot. A few seconds too long or at the wrong temperature, and you can end up with mush or rubbery lumps. Besides, fish, shellfish and crustaceans are easily cooked with other methods, so breaking out the Instant Pot for them won't guarantee better results as it can for tougher meats. The only exception is octopus and squid. Pressure cooking these tough creatures can make them tender while keeping the meat juicy. Just be sure to find a recipe that is specifically for the Instant Pot. Fried and crispy food Fries and other crispy foods don't work in the Instant Pot. Elevation Burger Unless you've purchased a specialty model, your Instant Pot is not a pressure fryer and isn't designed for the higher temperatures needed to heat cooking oil for something like crispy fried chicken. Of course, an Instant Pot is perfect for a dish like carnitas, but to get the final crisp on the meat, after you remove the meat from the Instant Pot, transfer it to a skillet and brown for a few minutes or on a baking sheet to crisp up in a hot oven. (However, if you're looking for an air fryer that will get your food nice and crispy, you can check out our tested picks for the best air fryers of 2025). CNET Dairy-based food Just like in a slow cooker, most dairy products such as cheese, milk and sour cream will curdle in an Instant Pot, no matter if you use the pressure cooking setting or the slow cooking setting. Add these ingredients after the dish cooks or avoid making the recipe in the Instant Pot altogether. There are two exceptions. One is when you're making yogurt, and that's only if you use a recipe specifically for an Instant Pot. The other is if you're making a cheesecake, and again, only if you're following an Instant Pot recipe. Pasta and noodles A pot of boiling water is the only way to cook pasta properly. Getty/JannHuizenga While you technically can cook pasta in an Instant Pot, it may come out gummy or unevenly cooked. Honestly, unless you don't have the option, boiling the pasta in a pot on a stovetop is just as fast and easy and will yield consistently better cooked pasta. Read more: No, Salted Water Doesn't Boil Faster and 7 Other Pasta Myths Two recipes at once Cooking a roast with potatoes and carrots is a time-honored recipe, right? Not in this case. Don't try to cook a main dish with a side dish in your Instant Pot. They may fit in the pot together, but each food will need its own cooking time. Cooking items together will inevitably result in a dry or mushy mess. Cakes You aren't really baking a cake in an Instant Pot, you're steaming it. The cake will be moist -- which works for something like bread pudding -- but you won't get a nice crust on the cake or the chewy edges that everyone fights over with baked brownies. However, if you do need to throw something together for a potluck or quick family dessert, you can get a moist sponge in half an hour or so, excluding prep time. Foods for canning Canning, the art of cooking and sealing foods in jars, is often done in a pressure cooker. So, it may seem like a good idea to make a batch of jams, pickles or jellies in your Instant Pot. Don't do it. With an Instant Pot, you're not able to monitor the temperature of what you're canning as you would with a regular pressure cooker. With canning, cooking and sealing the food correctly is key. Improper cooking and sealing can lead to bacteria growth that can cause food poisoning. While you want to avoid canning with an Instant Pot, some of the newer models (like the Duo Plus) do have a sterilize setting that lets you clean baby bottles and kitchen items like jars and utensils. Good steak A pressure cooker is not a barbecue. An Instant Pot does great with tougher cuts of meat -- which the pressure cooker can easily break down -- but not so good with ones that are best eaten medium-rare, like a steak. Save those for the grill. Yellow and red lentils Not all lentils can stand up to an Instant Pot's pressure. James Martin/CNET We love lentils, but not all of them can be cooked in an Instant Pot. Brown and green lentils can hold up to pressure cooking, but the more delicate yellow and red versions turn to mush because they cook so quickly. Unless you're purposely making lentil soup or dhal, stick to cooking red and yellow lentils on the stove to preserve their texture and shape. Cookies Cookies aren't going in your Instant Pot, are they? Getty Images Cookies are another baked food that doesn't work when made in the Instant Pot, either on pressure cooker or slow cooker mode. Instead, try your luck with convection heat by way of a wall oven, toaster or air fryer.
CBS News
2 hours ago
- CBS News
Long Island teen Finn Schiavone overcomes paralysis, credits Navy SEALs as inspiration
A Long Island teenager says a Navy SEAL museum, and the people who run it, inspired him to overcome an unthinkable challenge. Finn Schiavone overcame paralysis after a traumatic brain injury he sustained during wrestling practice almost three years ago. "I lost my ability to walk, talk, read and write," Schiavone said. He says the bravery on display at West Sayville's Lt. Michael P. Murphy Navy SEAL Museum is what inspired him as he went through rehab. "It's like, truly amazing - what people were able to put their mind to," Schiavone said. After two years of slight improvements, one day his aide rolled him into the museum in his wheelchair. Schiavone said something within its walls lit a new spark. "I was dazed out, half the time. But I remember coming here, and I was like, this is the place. They're going to be with me," Schiavone said. He was right. "Every time he came back, something new changed" "This kid had this infectious smile and charisma to him, but he couldn't relay his message," Lt. Michael P. Murphy Navy SEAL Museum Executive Director Chris Wylie said. Wylie said the two developed an instant connection, and as Schiavone frequently returned to the museum, that bond grew. "Winded up making this museum a normal spot, monthly or every other month, to come and visit and give him a little more inspiration," Wylie said. Each time Schiavone showed off his progress. His rehab, six days a week, were helping him. "Every time he came back, something new changed," Wylie said. Finn Schiavone takes his first steps during a race in 2024. Schiavone family Last year, during a race, Wylie was there to help Schiavone take his first steps on his own. "He ended up surprising his mother, taking a couple of steps. She never saw him get out of his wheelchair and be able to move on his own," Wylie said. Schiavone made these significant improvements after two years in a wheelchair, which is when doctors say significant functional recovery is rare. Now Schiavone is fully recovered, and competing in strength challenges at the museum. "I have nothing but gratitude for this place," he said. His next goal is to finish up high school and, once he graduates in two years, he wants to go into the Naval Academy and pursue special warfare.
Washington Post
2 hours ago
- Washington Post
15 sets of twins are graduating from one New York high school
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — A high school in the suburbs of New York City will be seeing double on graduation day this weekend: Among the nearly 500 students in its graduating class, 30 are twins. It's a tight knit group. Some of the students at Long Island's Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School have known each other since kindergarten, their parents meeting through a local twins club. Some even still plan family vacations together. These days, some of the twins are on a group text chain, which has helped them cope with their newfound notoriety as graduation day approaches. 'Honestly when we're together, the room is electric,' said Sydney Monka, as she attended graduation rehearsal with the other twins earlier this week. 'We're all very comfortable around each other and we all have these shared experiences so we're all bouncing off each other. It's really cool.' Save for the shared last names, though, the pairs may be hard to spot as they walk the stage Sunday at their high school graduation, held at Hofstra University in Hempstead. The students are all fraternal twins — meaning born from different eggs and sperm — so none of them are identical. Many of the twins are different genders. That doesn't make the bonds any less tight, says Bari Cohen, who is attending Indiana University in the fall. 'Especially for boy-girl twins, a lot of people think it's just, like, siblings, but it's more than that, because we go through the same things at the same time,' she said of her brother, Braydon Cohen, who is headed to the University of Pittsburgh. Most, when prodded, give a playful shrug at the curious phenomenon in the high school, which is located in an affluent, largely white district about 35 miles (56 kilometers) east of Manhattan. 'I guess there's just something in the water,' said Emily Brake, who is attending the University of Georgia, echoing a common refrain among the twins. 'We're all just very lucky. I think it's just a coincidence,' added her sister, Amanda Brake, who will be attending Ohio State University. Others acknowledge there's more than Mother Nature at work. Arianna Cammareri said her parents had been trying for years to have kids and in vitro fertilization was their last option. Back then, it was more common than it is now for IVF babies to be twins or triplets. There also may be a genetic component at play. 'There's a few twins in our family, like I have cousins that are twins, so I guess that raised the chances of having twins,' added the incoming freshman at Stony Brook University, also on Long Island. Large cohorts of twins are not unusual at Plainview-Old Bethpage. The high school had back-to-back graduating classes with 10 sets of multiples in 2014 and 2015, and next year's incoming freshmen class has nine sets of twins, according to school officials. Among the other schools around the country with big sets of graduating twins are Clovis North High School in Fresno, California, with 14 pairs, and Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Maryland, with 10 pairs. Last year, a middle school in suburban Boston had 23 sets of twins in its graduating class, though that's still far shy of the record for most multiples in the same academic class. New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, had a whopping 44 twin pairs and a set of triplets in 2017, according to Guinness World Records. Most of the twins at Plainview-Old Bethpage are heading off to different colleges. An exception is Aiden and Chloe Manzo, who will both attend the University of Florida, where they'll live in the same dormitory on campus and both study business, though with different majors. 'We're going to see each other a lot,' Chloe said wryly. 'Deep down, my mom knew it would be easier if we went to the same school,' she added. 'You know, like moving in, graduation, going to sports games.' Some were apprehensive about living far from their longtime partner in crime. Emma and Kayla Leibowitz will be attending Binghamton and Syracuse University, respectively. The fifth generation twins say they're already making plans for frequent visits even though the upstate New York schools are some 80 miles (130 kilometers) apart. 'I think it's gonna be really weird because we really do everything together. She's my best friend. I really can't do anything without her,' said Emma. 'We're sleeping over every weekend. I'm coming for football games — like all of it,' said Kayla. Others were looking forward to getting some breathing room. Sydney and Kayla Jasser said they're both studying fashion design — but at different colleges. Sydney is attending the University of Delaware while Kayla will be attending Indiana University. 'We could have went to the same college, but we just wanted to be able to be independent since we've been with each other forever,' Kayla said. 'It's good to get out there and have our own experiences.' ___ Follow Philip Marcelo on X at .
