We live on the edge of canyon open space and celebrate sharing our ridge with the local wildlife, including the local Northern Pacific rattler. And a few times\/year one of our rattlesnake neighbors curls up right next to the house and thus must be gently moved back out beyond our back fence into the open space. <\/p>\n
Efficiency is crucial to this process, both for the sake of personal safety and to minimize the stress to the snake. And of course the right tools: snake tongs, a snake hook and a 5-gallon bucket with proper lid. (snake pros use a pillowcase or equivalent to bag their quarry; I prefer a bucket with nice thick plastic wall between me and my potentially unhappy guest)<\/p>\n
My favorite tong\/stick combo comes from Forestry Suppliers: the “Gentle Giant M-1 Series Collapsable Snake Tongs (SKU 81086) and Collapsable Snake Hook (SKU 81061). Both also come in collapsable and non-collapsable versions, but I find the collapsable versions easier to store at the ready. <\/p>\n
The tongs come in either a 1-inch or 2-1\/4 inch wide jaw. Unless you are dealing with very large and heavy snakes, get the 1-inch version, as trying to capture a smaller (5 ft long or less) snake with the wide jaws risks the snake being able to wriggle free in the jaws. Not a good thing when you are on the other end of the stick. <\/p>\n
Also one can get either a 40-inch or 52-inch lengths: for our mostly mellow and not-so-big California rattlers, 40-inches is plenty, especially as the longer the tong, the harder it is to manage when one actually has a snake on the end. If I lived in Texas or New Mexico, where the rattlers are bigger and more nasty-tempered, I’d probably get the longer tongs. (Well, actually, I’d just run in the opposite direction.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Safe and humane rattlesnake removal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13298"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13300,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13298\/revisions\/13300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}