#Family battle snake how to
The website offers tips on identifying snake breeds and details on when and how to call for relocation services. Ireland’s daughters, Addy and Brooke, are also now training as apprentice wranglers. In 2020, three other North County men who Ireland met on Nextdoor volunteered to help and the Snake Wranglers group ( ) was born.
#Family battle snake free
To save these doomed creatures, Ireland began offering his free snake collection services on Nextdoor and quickly became overwhelmed by calls. Because fire officials don’t have the tools or time to relocate snakes, they usually are forced to kill them, even snakes that are nonvenomous. Ireland said he started capturing and relocating snakes on his own about four years ago when he saw neighbors posting on the Nextdoor app that they’d found a snake in their yard and called the fire department to remove it.
#Family battle snake professional
With his wife of 15 years, professional photographer Holly Cruikshank Ireland, and their two daughters, Addy and Brooke, Ireland has adopted four pet reptiles: a Florida king snake, an African ball python, a bearded dragon and a panther chameleon. Thirty years ago, he got a job in sales in San Diego, where he has always enjoyed hiking and searching for snakes. With no other kids to play with, he spent most of his free time hunting for “critters,” especially snakes, which he would capture with a forked stick, bring home in a pillowcase and keep in a large tank that his father set up in their home. The son of an oilman, Ireland grew up in England and Connecticut before settling with his family in a remote part of Texas at age 10. “They don’t want anything to do with people. “This is what people don’t realize about rattlesnakes,” he said.
The second snake was more eager to escape into the brush, but neither of the snakes was using their rattle or exhibiting any aggressive behavior. As Ireland placed the first snake in the dirt, it slithered slowly back toward him and quietly nestled itself between his boots in the shade. One by one he lifted the snakes out of the bucket with long metal hooks and then walked them into brush areas far away from each other to give them each their own hunting grounds. He was taking two freshly captured Southern Pacific rattlesnakes to their new homes far away from people. On a recent Thursday, Ireland hiked into the hills in an unincorporated part of the county carrying a black plastic bucket with the logo of a coiled snake on the side. The wranglers also get many calls for rattlesnakes, particularly the common Southern Pacific rattler and the rare red diamond variety. The calls come in for snakes of all varieties, including nonvenomous gopher, garter, king, racer, rosy boa and rat snakes.
This year’s snake season - which runs roughly from late March to Thanksgiving - is off to a banner start, so Ireland said he expects the 2022 tally to exceed last year’s total. Last year, the Snake Wranglers captured and relocated 304 snakes in North County.
By the end of his visit to the home, Ireland said the family’s young daughter was holding and playing with the snake. The agitated snake bit Ireland several times as he was trying to free it, but once the snake was pulled to safety, it became friendly and curious. On April 11, Ireland got a call from a family in the San Elijo Hills community of San Marcos, who found a harmless gopher snake trapped in some landscaping fabric behind their fence. (Charlie Neuman/For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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