A California woman who recently called a reptile rescue team about snakes under her home learned that a den of more than 90 rattlesnakes had set up camp there.
Sonoma County Reptile Rescue shared photos earlier this month of tangled masses of rattlesnakes of all sizes.
“This last week I got a call from a lady that said she had snakes under her house,” Alan Wolf, director of the rescue, wrote in a Facebook post. “3 hours and 45 minutes later this is what I came out with, 59 babies and 22 adults.”
Wolf said he had returned two more times since and had retrieved seven more snakes but suspected there would still be more, as the house’s foundation was built around rocks and the snakes “can come and go as they please.”
He did not disclose the woman’s name or the exact location of her home within Sonoma County.
Wolf said the snakes were northern Pacific rattlesnakes, which, according to Seattle’s Burke Museum, give birth to 4–21 live young between the months of August and October. Many females will often gather at a single den to give birth, the museum said.
The snakes kill and eat small mammals, amphibians, reptiles and birds using venom that is deadly to their prey. The rattlesnakes typically bite humans only if threatened or in self-defense. If bitten, humans should seek immediate medical care, which involves treatment with an anti-venom.