Ryan Heavy Head comes to the rescue of both vipers and terrified homeowners
Others typically get twisted and trapped in garden netting.“I call myself a rattlesnake wrangler,” says the 47-year-old, who runs a rattlesnake mitigation program in Lethbridge, southeast of Calgary.The line gets anywhere from 60 to 170 calls a year, and the number has been rising along with new housing developments on bluffs above the city’s river valley.Heavy Head estimates there are about 600 rattlers living along the deep ravines and coulees of the Oldman River.
“It’s just like snake heaven,” says Heavy Head as he carefully walks through the area. He’s wearing open-toed sandals, a short-sleeved T-shirt, camouflage shorts and a hat. “I’ve got to be careful because I’m still within the strike range and if she were to pull back — she’s coiled tight enough — she could lunge her body at me,” he says. Heavy Head manages to get the snake into a long, clear plastic tube so he can get a closer look.Heavy Head, originally from Oregon, says he loves snakes. He got his first pet snake, a boa constrictor, when he was eight.
One recent hotline call came from the University of Lethbridge, where some small rattlers had worked their way through the vents and into a maintenance room.
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