PRESS-ENTERPRISE (Riverside, California) 11 July 08 Riverside County crew gets lesson in handling poisonous snakes (Julia Glick)
The work of an animal control officer is not all warm and fuzzy. Sometimes it's cold, scaly -- and venomous.
Riverside County animal control officers and technicians grabbed and captured hissing pit vipers Wednesday as part of new training in handling the region's sidewinders, Mojaves, Southern Pacific rattlesnakes and other deadly native reptiles.
"There are a lot of fears involved with handling snakes, no matter how much experience you have dealing with animals," said Kim McWhorter, humane educator for the Riverside County Department of Animal Services.
"One of our main goals today is that our officers will leave feeling confident that they know how to safely deal with snakes," she added.
Wednesday's session at the Coachella Valley Animal Campus in Thousand Palms was one of several aimed at formally educating officers on removing and relocating poisonous snakes. Experts with the Southwestern Herpetologists Society will lead another hands-on training today in Riverside.
Residents often discover snakes sunning and slithering at this time of year. The Department of Animal Services averages about 25 snake calls each day countywide in the spring and summer, McWhorter said.
"People get hysterical, screaming and crying," said Abel Buenrostro, an animal control officer in the Hemet area who participated in Wednesday's training.
The snakes in most calls don't turn out to be venomous, but Buenrostro said he removed a Southern Pacific rattlesnake from a woman's yard a couple weeks ago in La Cresta, a community west of Murrieta.
She was gardening when she discovered the snake. Buenrostro said he followed county protocol, euthanizing the snake, because the area was not remote enough to safely relocate it.
Still, the session gave him knowledge and experience maneuvering the reptiles that will help him to save snake lives in the future when it's safe to do so, he said.
Roy Malleappah, one of the session's snake experts, encouraged officers to preserve snakes, because they are a key part of the food chain. They feast on gophers and rodents and are meals for red-tailed hawks and coyotes, he said.
"Killing the snakes is the easiest, irresponsible thing to do," said Malleappah, adoptions chairman for the herpetologists society.
One of people's most common misconceptions about poisonous snakes is that their bites are always fatal, he said. Only a handful of people die each year in this country from their bites, because treatment is very effective, he said. The key is to bring victims to a hospital with the appropriate anti-venom as quickly as possible, he said.
Malleappah and Jarron Lucas, president of the Southwestern Herpetologists Society, urged officers to establish a protocol for handling snake scenarios.
Such planning might have helped in an instance when Lucas was called upon to assist police and animal control officers in the San Fernando Valley a few years ago, Lucas said. Someone received a suspicious box in the mail and called the authorities. They opened it and found a snake, and called Lucas to identify it, he said.
It was a venomous African spitting cobra. If it weren't for an impacted venom gland, the snake could easily have blinded or even killed police officers, who were eying the animal. They should have sealed the box until an expert arrived, he said.
McWhorter said she hopes to make poisonous snake training a regular event for the department.
"We get calls from all over Riverside County," she said. "It's just the simple fact that as our population is growing, we are taking over more and more of the snakes' natural habitat."
For more information about rattlesnake safety, go to www.dfg.ca.gov/news/issues/snake.html
Crew gets lesson in handling poisonous snakes