Snake Removal in Buffalo, NY

Snakes in your Buffalo home

New York protects every native snake it has — there is no open season on any of them, and taking or moving one runs through the DEC's licensing and permit rules, not homeowner improvisation. So snake work in Buffalo is written differently from the other pages on this site: our crew identifies the animal first, fixes the openings and habitat that brought it in, and handles the snake itself only as the DEC license and permit allow.

The reassuring news is the local cast. Buffalo's snakes are harmless, rodent-eating neighbors: the central ratsnake in basements and barns, the northern watersnake along Lake Erie and the Niagara River, the little eastern garter snake in every garden, and the eastern milk snake around older foundations. Erie County has no venomous snake to worry about — the job is calm identification and good exclusion, nothing more dramatic.

The central ratsnake: the basement snake

The big black or gray snake in a Buffalo basement is the central ratsnake, a strong climber that follows mice and rats through foundation gaps and can turn up in attics after birds or bats. It is non-venomous, beneficial, and protected. If one is resident, it is telling you the house has both a rodent supply and a way in — sealing done for the mice solves the snake.

Watersnakes on the lake and river

Along the Lake Erie shore, the Niagara River and the creek mouths, the northern watersnake hunts fish and frogs from docks, rip-rap and marsh edges. Heavy-bodied and quick to defend itself if grabbed, it is constantly mistaken for something venomous — it is not, and no venomous look-alike lives in these waters.

The milk snake myth, retired

The eastern milk snake — gray or tan with reddish blotches — haunts older barns, stone foundations and basements after mice, and it has suffered two myths: that it milks cows (it does not) and that it is dangerous (it is a constrictor of mice, harmless to people and pets). When startled it may vibrate its tail in dry leaves, a bluff that has cost many a harmless snake its life. It is protected like every native snake here.

Garter snakes and the garden crew

The eastern garter snake is Buffalo's most-seen snake: small, striped, and busy in gardens, compost edges and creek banks eating slugs, worms and frogs. Calls come when several gather at a foundation in fall looking for a shared winter den below the frost line — a hibernaculum — and start appearing in the basement. Sealing the foundation gaps addresses the gathering without harming the gathered.

What we will and will not do

Plainly: we will identify the snake, tell you honestly whether it needs any action at all, seal the entries it used, and adjust habitat — woodpiles against the house, tall grass at the foundation, the rodent population feeding it. We will not promise to catch and haul away a protected snake as though it were a raccoon, and nobody should suggest killing one: it is illegal for protected species and pointless besides, since the openings and the mice would remain.

A snake inside the house

Keep eyes on it from a distance, keep pets in another room, and if it settles in a corner, an upturned bin placed nearby gives it a dark place to hide where it can be dealt with safely. Call us with a description or a photo from a safe distance; identification from a picture is often all the job requires.