Parents and pet owners — really, anyone in San Diego — knows the worries that rattlesnake season can bring.
NBC 7 spoke with a rattlesnake-removal expert not only about how he catches the snakes but also about how he helps keep them off his clients' properties.
Irena Segade has lived in her Rancho Penasquitos property, which borders a canyon, for 25 years. It might be lush and serene, but it also makes her uneasy.
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“I like nature, but I like a certain amount of it on the other side of the fence,” Segade told NBC 7 on Wednesday.
Segade said that, in the past two and a half decades, she's had three encounters with rattlesnakes.
When her neighbor’s dog was bitten right in front of her, she worried about her 3-year-old dog, Sunshine.
“He was just inches away from it,” Segade said.
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There was another close encounter very recently.
“Our neighbors took a photo of a very, very robust snake in the front of my house, and that’s when I called all the emergency people I could think of," Segade said.
Alex Trejo with So-Cal Rattlesnake Removal was one of the people she called. In fact, he was the one who removed the snake.
On Wednesday, Trejo and his crew returned, trenching and laying PVC-coated mesh along the perimeter of Segade's backyard to keep the snakes out.
“I tell people: Ssnakes are like us because they have an agenda, so they’ll come out looking for food, water, shelter maybe,” Trejo said.
Trejo told NBC 7 that the most common calls he gets are due to dog bites or because people tried to handle a rattlesnake themselves instead of leaving it to an expert. Trejo doesn't kill the reptiles, he relocates them.
Fall is the busiest time for him, Trejo said, because that's when most of the offspring are born.
