news-record.com

“I live outside the city limits and I’m having problems with snakes. I even found one in my house. How do I get rid of snakes?”

 — Cassandra Casey

This called for an expert — Robert Hood of Animal Control Experts, based in Matthews. He said Casey has three key questions to tackle:

1) Is the snake venomous?

2) How did it get inside?

3) What is it after?

Picture, for example, a chipmunk racing along the side of your house, and a snake following the scent. The chipmunk goes in a hole in the wall through a dryer vent.

“A snake is an opportunistic creature,” Hood explains. “He doesn’t see it as, 'There may be a lady in there that I can scare, too.’ He’s just curious. So he goes in the hole.”

Given the primitive nature of snakes — no feet, no legs, no wings — they prefer to live right on top of their food source.

That means the presence of snakes indicates a plentiful food source: insects for such smaller snakes indigenous to the Triad as the  brown DeKay snake; rodents for such larger snakes as the black rat snake.

Neither of those is venomous: A telltale sign is that their eyes are round, rather than slit in the pupils.

Just two main worries in that regard native to these parts, says Hood:

• The Copperhead — a Desert Storm color scheme with hourglass-shaped markings and a broad, triangular head, up to 3 1/2 feet long. But don’t fear the little ones, with a green-tipped tail, they are not yet venomous.
• The Timber Rattler — head and body are gray with V-shaped black bands and a jet-black tail, growing up to 6 feet long.

That said, not everyone wants snakes in their house.

The good news, Hood points out, is that snakes cannot claw or dig their way in, so holes are easily plugged with caulk or polymer foam.

There are also traps and such remedies as sulphur and lime, but Hood doesn’t recommend them. Better, he says, to find and remove the food source, be it insect or rodent, which are sometimes drawn by a supply of grass seed or bird seed left unsecured.

“People can start their own little ecosystem going and not even know it,” says Hood, who offers tips at

www.theanimalcontrolexperts.com.

Do you have a question you need researched? Call “Ask a Reporter!” at 373-7350 or e-mail tprout@news-record.com