So I was doing a power wash, gutter whitening, and exterior window clean at a residence today. The lady came home at lunchtime and asks me if I can do her a small favor. Being the idiot I am I said “oh sure”.
She then tells me that there’s a dead snake over by the stepping stone path off to the side of the house. Both my helper and I had walked right by there multiple times and had not noticed the dead snake. The lady had to point the dead snake out to me even when I was just a few feet away.
She said “it’s dead…it’s been right there since Thursday of last week”. I used to mess with snakes when I was a boy scout so I’m not really terrified by snakes as long as I know they are there so I don’t accidently step on them and get bitten. And I’m definitely not scared of dead snakes.
The snake had crawled into the landscape mesh and got hung and apparently died. The back half of it’s body was in clear view but the first half and the head were not in view but I could tell it was a water moccasin. Well, I tugged on the very tail end of the snake in an attempt to pull it out of the pinestraw covered mesh but couldn’t quite get a good grip but I did hear cracking of the bones.
So I grab the snake further up towards the middle of it’s body and it (the dead snake) jerked back really quickly. THIS SNAKE IS NOT DEAD!!! I told my helper to go get the 4’ Unger pole. I used the pole to rake back the pinestraw to reveal the snake in it’s entirety. Yep, it was alive alright and not very happy.
I guess I’m lucky I didn’t get bitten because the first half of the snake’s body was free to move around. The snake was just caught at the middle of it’s body by the landscape mesh. That, along with the shock of a dead snake suddenly coming alive shook me up a bit in spite of the fact that I was once a big bad boy scout who was never scared of snakes.
I hate to kill anything but since this was a poisenous snake in a residential yard I thought it best to terminate it. While I had the snake’s head pinned down with the Unger pole I cut the head off with a fishing knife. Now the snake is dead.
My new customer loves me to death and will be sure to call me back.
In a sense I did. I waived my reptile handling fee which is a minimum of $300.00
One of the the tripod flower pots from the patio needed to be placed on the lawn while PW’ing. The wind blew it over and it bursted. I was prepared to tell the lady that I would wave the reptile handling fee since the flower pot bursted.
She said the pot had been burtsed and glued back together so don’t worry about it. I said I’d go ahead and waive the reptile handling fee anyway.
A couple of years ago , I was cleaning a house out in the country. I walked around the side of the house and there was a rattlesnake stretched out on the patio. That is a sight that no one wants to see. The customers had been doing some brush removal around their property. I told them they needed to remove the snake if they wanted me to clean the windows in the back .
As a rookie professional wc, I need tips and suggestions on not only how to get cust.'s, but also how to keep them. Now I see the …WAY
tHANKS, LinO:cool:
You are my new hero as I hate snakes. I was once cleaning windows at a bagel shop and was changing my rubber and went to put the empty box in the dumpster. When I lifted the lid 2 angry racoons jumped out at me. The mess that ensued could not be cleaned with a squeegee. But your story is better as snakes trump racoons. Shannon
Had I known the snake was alive I would’ve never touched it or grabbed it. Yeah, I used to think I was a badass when I played with snakes when I was a kid but I left the poisonous ones alone.
I don’t play with water moccasins if I can help it. I’m lucky to not have been bitten by that rascal.
I love that thread Larry its got everything, crackheads, hippies, snakes, racoons, a Mazda 626(with vanity plates even), Charlton Heston, oh yeah and Linda called Bill a tool. Then Karl told her to sell him on Ebay.
Hey its the tools birthday today.
Happy birthday bill
ive only come across 1 snake in 10 years…guess im lucky…I made my worker kill it, was afraid it would crawl into the open garage door at customers house…i think of that snake every time I clean that house…has anyone heard that if you smell “cucumbers” that that means theres a certain type of snake around, cant remember what kind, but was told that…??
I was searching through the site to see if anyone else had any snake stories. That’s probably the worst part of the job for me. I’ve been very close to being bitten more times than I can count, but they never seem to bite me. I don’t know how many extention poles I’ve gone through whacking the darn pests. I remember one house I was at off a lake where a guy had garden snakes nesting around the back of the house. They may not be deadly but I darn near stepped right on 5 of them in about an hour, and the bad thing is that you never see a snake until you’re right on top of it. It doesn’t matter if it’s poisonous or not because you’ve already had the heart attack.
Oddest thing, on April Fools day this year I was driving down the road and saw a snake go flying in front of my truck. And no, it wasn’t a drinking day. I looked up and saw that a chicken hawk had it by the head and was flying with it. Only time I’ve ever seen a hawk carrying a snake. Hawks are my new heroes.
