Snakes Alive!

Albany made major headlines last week after a Big Country snake removal company posted a video on its Facebook page that went viral within a day.

Most of the news reports, which included both area and nationwide networks, started out with the phrase, “A Texas homeowner who reported seeing ‘a few’ snakes under his home actually had dozens of rattlesnakes living beneath his house.”

Many of the reporters also said that the house was “in Albany,” but according to Big Country Snake Removal’s post, the site is actually located between Albany and Baird.

The landowner has apparently not been named in any of the reports, which range from Abilene stations to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and WFAA in Dallas to national coverage like the Associated Press, USA Today, CBS News, and NBC News.

However, this is far from the first time that rattlesnakes have invaded Shackelford County homes.

In fact, about 30 years ago, the Albany News covered a rattlesnake removal that actually was inside the city limits.

But that was before social media, and the incident got no attention outside of the community – perhaps because it really wasn’t all that unusual in this part of the world.

As of press time, the original Big Country Snake Removal Facebook post had 2.3 million views and 3,400,000 comments, including an observation by Albany resident Twana Vickers.

“We had hundreds under (our house) all the time,” wrote Vickers about her childhood home, which was located at the Albany city limits on the Clarke Estate. “A whole cistern full.”

The wooden house that the Vickers family inhabited was built around the small rock structure that now stands on a small hillside east of the Old Jail Art Center, just across Highway 6. An old abandoned cistern reportedly lurked under the original part of the house and eventually became a den for snakes. 

Vickers and several of her siblings were teens when they began living there. 

“We never had any snakes in the house that I ever knew of,” said Vickers, “but my dad made sure that every hole was plugged before we moved in, because we knew they were there.”

The man who was installing the telephone line for her family before the move-in date around 1986 encountered a snake in the house, she said, and wouldn’t go back in.

“You could walk across the floors sometimes and hear them rattling,” she said. “And they were always on the steps. We would get a running start up the driveway, and jump over the steps completely because the snakes were there so often.”

Vickers said that the family learned to coexist with the rattlers, but did kill quite a few over the decade or so that they lived there.

“We had to be careful, but my dad also insisted that we know the difference between rattlesnakes and bullsnakes,” she said. “He didn’t want us killing any bullsnakes.”

She added that her aunt, Nancy Waters, once crawled up into the attic just to see what might be stored in the century-old house. What she found was dozens and dozens of snakeskins.

“So they were everywhere,” said Vickers, “but on the bright side, we never had any mice.”

Snake hunters came to the house frequently.

“I remember them coming with big Plexiglas cases, and one time, they got out about 30 big Western Diamondback rattlesnakes,” she said.

A whole “community” of dozens of ground rattlers under the house was basically ignored, said Donnie Lucas, who wrote about a 1987 extraction, because they weren’t big enough to consider.

“These same guys came several years in a row, and I think they won the Sweetwater Roundup a couple of times, mostly with snakes they got at our house,” said Vickers.

She said that although members of her family accidentally stepped on rattlers a few times, no one ever got bitten.

Vickers also said that she doesn’t believe that her house was or is the only one in Albany with a snake population.

In fact, there have been many stories of snake dens  in the hill behind Rose Addition over the years.

“We lived with them, but we basically left them alone, and they left us alone,” she said. “We definitely developed a healthy respect for them.”

Last week’s “viral” rattlesnake removal footage should remind county residents to watch their step, especially as the weather gets warmer, and snakes of all kinds become more active.