A first-time homebuyer made a discovery that no-one wants after finding a whole load of snakes living in the walls of her new house.
It’s like something out of a horror movie, but it became a shocking reality for 42-year-old Amber Hall when after she got the keys to her new home in Colorado.
She had thought that the four-bedroom gaff was set to become her dream home, but that dream quickly soured into a nightmare after she found the reptiles had made their own home in her walls.
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The tale of how she discovered that she’d a load of slithering squatters in her walls sounds pretty terrifying.
Hall told local media: “I was trying to unpack and my dog crouched down and he started walking over here [towards the back of the garage] really slow.
“I came over to see what he was looking at, thinking it was like a spider or something, and there were two little holes right here and I saw snakes slither up the wall.
“So, I panicked.”
That sounds like a fair response.
The large snakes were coiled up in the walls, and those first couple were just the tip of the iceberg.
So far, they’ve found 10 snakes in the house in Centennial, Colorado, and there could be more, as Amber claims that she’s felt the walls to be warm from the other side.
Snakes are famously cold-blooded, but we’ll see, right?
Naturally, it’s left her feeling a little uneasy in her new house.
Amber told KMGH: “I can’t unpack any of my stuff because I’m definitely afraid that there’s snakes in the boxes or under the boxes…
“It’s like you crawl into bed, and if the sheet brushes your foot or something, you immediately rip the covers off or jump out of bed to make sure nothing’s in there.”
A snake wrangler has been hired, and the professional thought that the snakes might have been there for a few years, given the size of them.
Hall has already had to spend around $1,000 removing snakes from the property.
The real-estate company that sold the house has claimed they had no idea that the snakes were there, and hadn’t seen one in any of their properties.
Hall finds that hard to believe, as she added: “I don’t feel like I’m the first one to find them.
“But I don’t think that anybody would ever say that they knew they were there.”
According to Joe Sheftel, the president of Blue Tick Pest and Wildlife Control, there is likely a snake den beneath the garage.
He told local TV: “If it’s in the metro area, you know, the vast majority of pest and wildlife companies will give you a free inspection.
“If it’s for a new home and you’re like, ‘oh, well we don’t have a problem, we just want a free inspection', it might run a couple hundred dollars, but then you’ll still get a lot of pictures, you’ll get a report, and you might get some peace of mind.”
As for Hall, she said her predicament is ‘rough’.
“I’m 42 years old, and this is my first home. I’ve worked my whole life for it, and I can’t enjoy it,” she said.
“My kids can’t enjoy it, I’m scared to death.”
Tom Wood