A critical service that Rattlesnake Solutions has offered since the beginning is access to experts at any time of day or night. While people have office hours, snakes do not 🙂 and knowing what that squiggly buddy is in the garage may be is important.
As we’ve grown over the last 15 years, it’s been more difficult to keep up with requests quickly. We are also missing out on some very important information: these sightings by everyday hikers and homeowners may provide detailed insights into the distribution and behavior of native snakes. In addition to the snake identification guide and snake ID micro-field guides released in the last year, we have a new service.
So, the process has been rebuilt. Introducing the first version of our new service: azsnake.info
No AI used 🙂 this gets your information and photos to our team, who will review it and send you a response. If you have questions about your encounter, too, just add them to the notes and you’ll learn all you need to know.
This effort is funded by proceeds from our snake removal and snake fence installation operations and is offered free to the state we love.
This service will add a much-needed layer of data to our collection. This will help show the distribution and abundance of various snake species across urban areas that may not be well represented by those provided by relocation efforts or field surveys. Records originating from relocation records, for example, will skew towards larger, “scary”, and venomous snakes … as many of the others do not require such action. And for as many animals as we see on surveys, these are not in private backyards and fields, so there’s just as much to learn there as well.
Eventually, this data layer provided by casual observers will make the dataset we work with to research rattlesnake safety and conservation more robust and useful. It will also be integrated with our Snake Activity Forecast system, to give more in-depth information about what happens outside of the snake removal hotline.
It will be a better service, too, than what we currently have. We’ve provided THOUSANDS of free snake identifications over the years at all hours of the day and night. But, as we’ve grown considerably, the existing system of “put your cell phone number on everything” needs some work 🙂 And, we’ll be able to open up responses to the rest of the Rattlesnake Solutions team, which will allow FASTER responses, especially when I am personally unavailable or traveling.
This is just the first version. In the future, once all the bugs are worked out, we’ll be able to provide much more in-depth information about every species of snake in Arizona to people when it is needed most. For now, it can be a welcome addition to community social pages to help cut down those “what is this snake” posts, and let everyone breathe a little leasier this rattlesnake season.