by Thom W. Conroy

Created on: July 22, 2010

Even for the most ardent animal-lovers among us the presence of snakes around and near the home can be troubling, and the problem becomes how to remove the creatures without violent or harmful methods being employed. While professional exterminators perform an adequate job of snake removal from a property, their services can often be expensive. There are a number of glue-type traps that are available commercially to trap snakes, but they can injure a snake and need to be checked several times daily to prevent a snake from being harmed. In most instances the best way snakes can be caught rather easily is in a homemade snake trap by a homeowner and then relocated to an area that is less populated by humans and more suitable as a habitat for snakes.

There are two basic homemade snake traps that work well and are fairly simple to make - a box trap and a funnel trap. While both perform the same task of trapping the snake alive without injury, each is best suited to a different use. A box trap is best for catching snakes where a hole in the ground is found near the home, as the box trap can be placed over the hole and a snake that is in the hole has only one way out - into the box trap. A homemade snake trap of the box type is simply a square box with a small hinged door on the bottom. The basic premise is that the snake crawls into the box trap and the hinged door closes securely behind it preventing escape.

A homemade snake trap of the funnel variety is nothing more than a cone-shaped trap made of screen with a small opening and a bait placed inside, so when the snake enters for the food it cannot escape. A homemade funnel style of snake trap works best when placed along the base of a home and set early in the morning at about dawn, as snakes become active with the sunrise.

In every instance when you make a homemade snake trap it is important to use caution not only to prevent harm from coming to the snake, but to prevent being bitten. A snake species that cannot be easily identified should never be handled, and those that can be identified should only be handled while wearing gloves. Once a snake is caught in a homemade snake trap, contact your local wildlife commission to ascertain where the snake can be safely released back into the wild.

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