Latest news with #rattlesnake
Yahoo
a day ago
- General
- Yahoo
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
Fox News
11-06-2025
- General
- Fox News
Rattlesnake bites teen on southern state fishing trip
Officials executed a dramatic rescue last week after a teenager on a fishing trip was bitten by a rattlesnake "deep in the woods" of the western North Carolina mountains. The State Emergency Operations Center dispatched a North Carolina National Guard Black Hawk helicopter to the scene in Avery County with rescue technicians from the Charlotte Fire Department. "The hiker was successfully rescued and was receiving medical treatment at the hospital," North Carolina Emergency Management said in a June 5 Facebook post. The snake bite victim, Zain Shah, thanked first responders in the comments section. "Thank you all for rescuing me! I recognize the man in yellow on the far right from when he took me up on the cable to the helicopter. I cannot express my gratitude enough!" he wrote. Shah's father, Inman Shah, also explained in the comments section that "[w]hat started as a fun end-of-high-school fishing trip" for his son, Zain, "and his buddy in the WNC mountains turned deadly when he was bitten by a timber rattlesnake deep in the woods." "I'm beyond grateful for the incredible NCHART and Linville-Central Rescue teams, who got to them in the middle of nowhere and saved his life!" Inman Shah wrote. "He was air-lifted to and treated at Johnson City Medical Center, TN, and is now recovering at home. We are forever in your debt." The timber rattlesnake is a pit viper that is gray in color, sometimes with a pinkish hue, with black and brown diamond-like shapes across its back. It also has a stripe that runs down its back, which can be orange, yellow or pinkish in color, according to the Smithsonian National Zoo. A timber rattlesnake will prop itself upright and make a rattling noise with its tail when threatened – a warning that it is about to strike. They range in size from about 2.5 to 5 feet on average. The pit vipers can be found across the eastern United States, with sightings ranging from Texas to Iowa to the Carolinas and north to Pennsylvania and New England, according to the National Zoo.
The Independent
09-06-2025
- Health
- The Independent
High school student airlifted to safety after rattlesnake bite on remote fishing trip
A high school student was airlifted to the hospital after being bitten by a rattlesnake while on a remote fishing trip in North Carolina. Zain Shah, 17, was hiking in the Pisgah National Forest when he was bitten by the snake about two miles from the nearest road. A North Carolina National Guard Blackhawk was dispatched to the area along with a rescue team. The rattlesnake bit him around 5 p.m. on June 5 while he was walking along Lost Cove Creek. He was later airlifted to Johnson City Medical Center in Tennessee, according to The News & Observer. The teenager was hiking with his friend Kevin Foley, 18. The two had planned to fish until it got dark and then camp for the evening. 'At the point where we were about to turn back, I stepped over a log and as my foot landed, I felt a prick,' he told the newspaper. 'It was painless. I looked down and see a rattlesnake sitting there. I think: 'No way that just happened.' But I rolled down my sock and see two red dots and blood coming out. I knew it was potentially deadly.' Zain Shah did not have cell service but used his friend's phone to dial 911. A dispatcher told him it would be too dangerous for him to try to walk back to his vehicle. It's believed the teen, who took a photo of the reptile, was bitten by a timber rattlesnake. The reptile can reach up to seven feet and has venom that is 'potent enough to kill a human,' according to the Smithsonian's National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute. After the reptile bit him, Zain Shah said his body began to tingle and he developed pins and needles. At one point, he thought he was going into shock. It took two hours for rescuers to reach him. He told the outlet he did not have a strong reaction to the bite, leading medical professionals to believe it may have been a dry bite, which means either little or no venom was released. Still, bloodwork later confirmed he was still at risk of uncontrolled bleeding. Medical professionals administered 12 vials of antivenom over three days in the hospital, he told the outlet. Zain Shah, who is due to graduate from high school later this month, is grateful to the first responders and his friend for coming to his aid. 'All of them saved my life,' he said. 'I wouldn't be here without the help of so many people. I have ventured alone into the mountains before, but I'll never do that again. The buddy system only from now on, but this will not keep me from going back out there.' His father took to social media to also thank the medical team. 'What started as a fun end-of-high-school fishing trip for my son and his buddy in the western North Carolina mountains turned deadly when he was bitten by a timber rattlesnake deep in the woods,' Imran Shah wrote on Facebook. 'I'm beyond grateful for the incredible NCHART and Linville-Central Rescue teams, who got to them in the middle of nowhere and saved his life! He was air-lifted to and treated at Johnson City Medical Center, Tennessee, and is now recovering at home. We are forever in your debt.'
CBC
09-06-2025
- General
- CBC
This non-venomous snake can imitate a rattlesnake when it feels threatened
Massassauga rattlesnakes don't live around Ottawa but that doesn't stop a local snake from imitating one when it feels threatened. CBC's Sarah Kester spoke with a wildlife expert to learn more.
BBC News
18-05-2025
- Health
- BBC News
'You're supposed to hate snakes - I don't': The rescuers saving Arizona's rattlesnakes
Reports of human-snake encounters are on the rise – and some people react to a snake on their property by killing it. But is there a better way, for both people and the reptiles? The rattlesnake hotline call handler had a question. Could Christa Reinach see whether the 3ft-long (1m) snake, currently stretched out on her patio, had black and white bands on its tail? "Yes," said Reinach, eyeing the creature through her window. While the call handler couldn't be sure, those markings likely meant that Reinach had a venomous western diamondback rattlesnake on her property. A snake relocator would be there as soon as possible. Reinach sat back and waited. Although a bite could potentially be fatal, she wasn't overly worried by the rattlesnake herself. And her dogs, two Chinese Shar-Peis, were safely locked inside the house. Reinach lives in Rio Verde Foothills, a community near Scottsdale, Arizona. Because this community is right by the desert, she had every expectation that snakes would appear on her land from time to time. But she didn't want the snake sticking around for too long – particularly because of her horses, who might put their heads to the ground to inspect a snake, only to get bitten on the nose. "If the nose swells, then they cannot breathe," Reinach says. Between 7,000-8,000 people are bitten by a venomous snake every year in the US; around five die. Pets are even more likely to suffer a bite, and to be killed by it. Of all US snake species, rattlesnakes are among the most dangerous. In a study of snakebites affecting 11,138 patients, published in 2019, the type of snake that caused the bite was identifiable in roughly half of those cases – and within that group, the most common bite was a rattlesnake bite. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that, for anyone bitten by a rattlesnake, 10-44% will have lasting injuries, such as losing a finger. As property developers push further into snake habitats, the potential for human-snake encounters is on the rise, according to experts who spoke to the BBC. Climate change may also have an impact. It is eroding some snakes' habitats – as well as making them more likely to seek out, say, a cool garden on a hot day. But snakes play a crucial role in local ecosystems. Experts say that simply killing every snake that winds up on human property isn't just unethical; ultimately, it could cause problems for humans, too. In certain cases, euthanising snakes is desirable, such as when invasive species begin taking too great a toll on native wildlife. Humanely killing those invasive snakes after capturing them can help to keep the ecosystem in balance. But in Arizona and other parts of the US, some organisations are working to capture and relocate native snakes alive. Homebuilding projects in the state have expanded into desert areas, replacing shrubs with residential buildings. It means that people are increasingly living in rattlesnake hotspots. Local data suggests a steady rise in bite reports in recent years. That's where Rattlesnake Solutions comes in. This local firm endeavours to rescue and move snakes when they're discovered somewhere that could pose a threat to humans or pets. The company indicates that rattlesnake relocation requests appear to be rising in certain mountainous residential areas. It was Rattlesnake Solutions' number that Christa Reinach dialled when she found the eastern diamondback on her property last April. Not long after she made the call, a member of the company's team came out to her ranch. Reinach watched as the snake rescuer gently scooped the rattlesnake up, aided by a reassuringly long pair of snake tongs, before setting the animal inside a large container with a fitted lid. Holes in the barrel ensured the snake wouldn't run out of air. The rescuer took the snake into the desert, where there are plenty of dens for it to hide in and rodents for it to hunt. A place where there are no patio lights overhead, just thousands of stars. Reinach was happy with how everything went. "I really don't believe in killing anything when it is just out of place," she says. Rattlesnake relocators take this approach not just because some people think native snakes are neat. Such snakes, actually, do a lot of good. They eat rodents, helping to keep mice populations under control, for example. This is particularly beneficial to farmers, since large numbers of mice can devour astonishing amounts of grain. One Australian study estimated that populations of eastern brown snakes can remove thousands of mice per square kilometre of farmland every year. Rattlesnakes in North America play a similar role. They might also help plant life by dispersing seeds. In 2018, US researchers published a study that showed how rattlesnakes sometimes consume seeds indirectly, by eating rodents carrying seeds in their mouths. By later excreting the seeds, the same snakes could help plants to grow in new areas. Rattlesnake predation might even reduce the incidence of Lyme disease, which is spread by biting insects called ticks – snakes eat small mammals that ticks like to feed on. But despite these benefits, some snake species are currently under threat. Numbers of the eastern diamondback rattlesnake are declining, for instance, and the Arizona black rattlesnake is potentially headed towards extinction. A 2022 study suggested that temperature rises caused by climate change will reduce the suitable habitat available to 71% of US rattlesnake species between now and 2040. Living with snakes Bryan Hughes was about five years old when he first held a snake in his hands. Members of a local herpetological society – a group that studies and looks after reptiles and amphibians – had brought a scarlet kingsnake to a nature centre near where he lived at the time, in Oregon. It was small but incredibly beautiful. Hughes marvelled at the reptile's rich red, creamy yellow and jet-black bands of colour. It was so shiny and clean, it almost looked wet. "It just seemed so cool," he recalls. Searching for the words to explain the effect it had on him, he adds, "Holding that animal at that time felt like – it just hit something." After that, Hughes checked out every book about snakes from the library that he could find. Before long, he was looking for snakes in the wild. It felt like treasure hunting, he says. After losing his marketing job following the 2008 financial crisis, he decided to try and make a living out of his fascination with snakes. Although he had no formal training, he had spent time volunteering for a herpetological association where he would rescue and relocate snakes that found their way into someone's garden or garage. There was so much demand that Hughes decided to launch a similar service as a business. He put together a logo, launched a website and, almost overnight, Rattlesnake Solutions was born. Since then, Hughes and his colleagues in Arizona have relocated thousands of snakes – he estimates "around 20,000" in total, or roughly 1,500 a year – and Hughes has co-authored multiple scientific papers about rattlesnake encounters. Each snake relocation costs a homeowner around $150 (£113) and the work, from capture to release, typically takes about two hours. There are many different species of snake native to Arizona, including multiple venomous rattlesnakes. The most common callouts are triggered by western diamondbacks and non-venomous Sonoran gopher snakes, both of which can grow to 6ft (2m) in length – making them pretty hard to miss should they slither into someone's garden. Hughes says he and his colleagues always try to tell homeowners about the snake that they have been called in to capture. It is a key opportunity to inform a homeowner about the species they are dealing with, or to give advice on how to behave around venomous snakes. It's also a chance for an upsell. Rattlesnake Solutions offers a form of fencing that, when dug partially into the ground, can seal off the perimeter of a property from serpentine callers. "The harder task is making sure the snake lives and isn't immediately a problem for somebody else," explains Hughes. "We need to find the right hole in the ground to put the snake in, or it will die." Rattlesnake Solutions aims to reach such a location within minutes or hours of retrieving a snake. Part of the reason for the rise in snake encounters that Hughes and his colleagues have detected, he says, is because housing developers are repeatedly making "the same mistakes". They use large piles of rocks to protect tracts of land from eroding away during storms – but this makes a perfect hiding place for snakes. Also, developers often plant gardens full of leafy shrubs that require artificial watering. Snakes enjoy sheltering beneath those moist, cool plants. Climate change is exacerbating the consequences of such mistakes. Hotter summers mean snakes – which don't have an internal system to regulate their body temperature – are more likely to seek shelter in people's lush gardens. In 2023, a record was broken in Phoenix, Arizona for the number of consecutive days, 55, at or above 110F (43.3C). Plus, when the weather is hot and sunny – so long as it is not dangerously hot – people often spend more time outdoors. These trends mean that snakes and people are encountering each other more often. The frequency of those encounters and snakebites, too, might only continue to rise. But humans need to learn to live alongside snakes, experts say. "Rattlesnakes and people can coexist," says Emily Taylor, a snake specialist at Cal Poly in California who carries out native species snake relocations herself, on a voluntary basis. She describes Bryan Hughes as a friend but says she has no commercial connection to his company. She agrees that extensive residential home construction in desert areas is likely to promote encounters between people and snakes. Back in Arizona, more homeowners might catch sight of a rattlesnake on their land in the coming years. Every spring, in particular, the snakes roam far and wide, looking for mates. Reinach, for one, accepts this. "We live in the desert," she says. "The snakes are just part of that ecology." When they appear on TV or in movies, rattlesnakes are often sensationalised. They're depicted as menacing and vicious. Bryan Hughes, who has never got over his fascination with them, knows better. Rattlesnakes are wild animals whose lives are increasingly at risk from the expansion of human civilisation, and a society that doesn't really understand these reptiles. "You're supposed to hate these things, you're supposed to kill these things – well, I don't," says Hughes. "I want to save them." -- For essential climate news and hopeful developments to your inbox, sign up to the Future Earth newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week. For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
