Bay Village Snake Hunters – Basement Edition

For months last Fall Bay Village resident Kevin Davey entertained Secret Bay Village Facebook readers with his hunt for snakes in his basement. Five months later the saga continues….

Feb. 2, 2022

Just when you thought it was safe to go down to the basement, I present another (final?) episode of “Bay Village Snake Hunters – Basement Edition”

Before I get to the story, I’m sure you all know the great work they do at the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center. They deserve our support, and they play a part in this story later on…

Anyhow, over the weekend I was in our basement, religiously doing my intense daily Bowflex manly-man workout…well actually, I don’t workout EVERY day…OK, who am I kidding? I’ll confess, I was actually just moving the Bowflex – and it was the best (and only) workout I’ve had with that thing in 10 years!

After moving the exercise equipment/clothes rack, I saw a short dark rope on the ground. I went to pick it up, and it MOVED! Oh no, another snake!!!

For those of you new to the story, let me back up a bit. Back on August 31 – a date I’ll always remember because it was the scariest birthday of my wife’s Amy Fraraccio Davey life – she found 2 baby Northern Water snakes in our basement. And that was just the start. The whole story can be found on other posts of mine here (Facebook), but it ended up that I found about 15-20 baby snakes in the basement, most alive. And I found one pissed off Mom snake (photo of her glorious 3+ foot long self staying warm on my laptop below). All the live snakes were captured and safely returned to the wild.

Back in late September – a month after it started – I thought the saga was over. My last encounter with a live snake was one I saw on my “snake cam” in late September. I was in New York City at the time, and by the time I got home, that snake was nowhere to be found. I did find a dried out snake carcass or two after that, and I convinced myself that the carcass was the snake I never caught. Oh, the lies we tell ourselves to make life bearable, right?

From September to late January, life went on. Amy & I even laughed a bit about the snakes (I laughed more of course, and I think Amy was really swearing under her breath, not laughing). Gas cans and matches were stowed away, the house remained standing, the snake webcam was removed, and life went back to normal.

So that brings us to this past weekend, and the “dude, that’s not a piece of rope, that’s another snake” moment. At least one snake has been living in our basement FOR 5 MONTHS! This snake was a bit bigger than the other babies, but still only about 8 inches long. I hope his long term growth wasn’t stunted by 5 months of no water and likely no food. But I digress…

Just to repeat: This poor snake had been living in our basement for 5 freakin’ months! He probably ate a few spiders, but not much else. He is way too small to eat any mice or other critters – not that we have any (yea, sure, like I actually know this to be true).

Of course, now I have a snake in a bucket, and I do not want to kill him. Just because his Mom made some bad life choices doesn’t mean he should suffer, right? But it is the dead of winter, and I could not just release him outside.

So I called the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center. They had me send this mugshot (below) of the intruder, confirmed it was a Northern Water Snake, and best of all agreed to take care of it over the winter! I dropped him off, and I’m guessing he’ll be happy there, eating worms and staying warm all winter. I can even call them to get health updates on the new resident!

By the way, I did a pretty thorough search of the basement, and did not find any more snakes. But of course, I THOUGHT I had done a pretty good search before! This then SHOULD be the end of the snake saga – let’s hope so!

And thanks again to the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center. You can donate right here: www.lensc.org/support/donations/

Ed. Note: Thank you Kevin for sharing your story with us. You can read Kevin’s previous adventures in snake wrangling HERE.