During the 17 years Matt Thiel has been a Vermont game warden, he’s helped release a fox tangled in a soccer net. He’s captured an injured bald eagle in need of rehabilitation. And he’s even helped relocate a moose that was getting a little too comfortable in a neighborhood in Shelburne.
Thiel has a truckload of equipment to help him do his job, but snake tongs and hooks are not among his tool set. That’s because there are no venomous snakes in the Champlain Islands of northwestern Vermont where he works.
So when he got a call about a rattlesnake in Grand Isle one day this summer, he had to improvise.
Thiel tracked down a long-handled garbage grabber in the equipment shed at the Missisquoi National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center. “It was one of those, ‘I’d rather have those than nothing,’ because I wasn’t reaching for it with my bare hands,” he said.
Vermont has a small population of timber rattlesnakes in Rutland County, and they’ve been found in New York state, across Lake Champlain. But before Thiel got that call, as far as anyone can remember, there has never been a rattlesnake spotted in Grand Isle County.
When Kim McFerron happened upon the nearly 4-foot-long snake near her Grand Isle home, her first reaction was to turn to ChatGPT.
“I uploaded the photo and said, ‘Is this a rattlesnake?’ And it said, ‘It’s a timber rattler.”
The snake was right along the path she and her family use to get down to the lake, and she was afraid that if it disappeared into the rocky ledge she would forever fear for her kids’ safety.
I kid you not. I sat for 30 minutes, until these rangers arrived, doing my loving-kindness meditation, trying to just send peace to this snake.Kim McFerron, Grand Isle resident
More online research suggested the nearest pharmacy with antivenom was an hour away.
So McFerron summoned her meditation skills, honed through classes at the nearby Vermont Zen Center.
“I kid you not. I sat for 30 minutes, until these rangers arrived, doing my loving-kindness meditation, trying to just send peace to this snake,” she said. “I tried to send all the good vibes. I was so desperate to try to keep this snake to stay close so that we could capture it.”
Thiel was joined by another game warden who had his own makeshift snake-catching equipment in the form of a fishing net and a beer cooler.
And for the next 30 minutes the two well-trained wildlife professionals bobbed and weaved in and out of the low bushes, learning as they went, and eventually coaxing the snake into the net, and then the beer cooler.
Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department Herpetologist Luke Groff received the call from McFerron.
It’s pretty common for Groff to hear from Vermonters who think they’ve seen a rattler.
“It’s usually a milk snake, a garter snake, a water snake, or something like that,” Groff said. So, when the photo McFerron sent him did, in fact, show a timber rattlesnake, he was surprised.
Groff said it’s impossible to know how a rattlesnake ended up in northwestern Vermont.
It could have been someone’s escaped pet, though it’s illegal to keep a timber rattlesnake captive.
Rattlesnakes have been known to find a warm place to curl up, like underneath a car or in a boat. There’s a chance the Grand Isle snake hitched a ride unknowingly, and then slithered out when the vehicle got to its destination, Groff said.
In all likelihood, it was a unique set of circumstances that led to a timber rattlesnake exploring a backyard in Grand Isle.
Once the snake was captured, Groff held it in his Department of Fish and Wildlife office in Rutland.
“My wife wouldn’t let me keep it at our house,” he said.
He called around to a few animal rehabilitation centers, but it turns out that offloading a venomous snake isn’t so easy.
It would not have been appropriate to release it into the wild among Vermont’s timber rattlesnake community without knowing where it came from, Groff said, so he held it in his office for about three weeks.
Eventually Groff tracked down a professor at the University of Scranton, in Pennsylvania, who uses rattlesnakes as part of the school’s education program. He drove the snake more than four hours across Pennsylvania to its new home.
The school’s rattlesnake “ambassador” died recently, and so the Grand Isle snake is now working with the professor to educate the public about the species.
The 3.7-foot snake, which weighs about 2 pounds, is settling into its new home, in a terrarium, on the fifth floor of the University of Scranton Loyola Science Center.
It’s highly unlikely that Grand Isle will ever get another rattlesnake exploring the shores of Lake Champlain, but Thiel, the Vermont game warden, says he’s keeping the long-handled garbage grabber in his truck, just in case.
