Homeowners Find 2-Foot Venomous Snake in Crawl Space of Virginia Home

A venomous copperhead snake was spotted in the crawl space of a Virginia home.

The owners of the home in Mechanicsville alerted a private wildlife-removal company, Virginia Wildlife Management and Control (VWMC), which removed the snake last Wednesday.

The company identified the serpent as an eastern copperhead snake that measured around 2 feet, spokesperson Richard Perry told Newsweek.

The eastern copperhead snake (Agkistrodon contortrix)—often referred to simply as a copperhead—is a venomous species of pit viper found across eastern portions of North America.

The snake has a distinctive hourglass pattern on its scales, with markings in various shades of brown. Eastern copperheads tend to grow to around 22 to 36 inches as adults, although larger specimens over 50 inches have been recorded, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History.

After arriving at the property in Mechanicsville, VWMC staff removed the snake from the crawl space underneath the house. To do so, they used snake tongs, a special device used to safely grab and hold snakes from a distance.

When dealing with venomous snakes such as eastern copperheads, the staffers always take safety measures to minimize the risk of injury.

"We take great precautions removing [eastern copperheads] by using professional snake tongs and tall leather boots or leg protectors," Perry said. "The risk to humans is that they will definitely strike and induce venom if they feel threatened or provoked."

While copperheads are venomous, the snakes are not generally aggressive and do not tend to bite unless they feel threatened. A copperhead's bite can be painful, however, and should be treated as serious—although the bites are rarely fatal.

The day before this incident, VWMC was called to remove another copperhead from a yard in Midlothian, Virginia.

"We deal with copperheads and many other snakes on a daily basis in our line of work," Perry said.

Aside from snakes, VWMC also helps to capture and remove other wildlife from properties, including bats and birds.

The eastern copperhead is found across a wide variety of habitats within its range, which spans large sections of eastern North America, including forests and swampy regions. Sometimes the snake is seen in suburban neighborhoods where development has encroached on its natural habitat.

The name copperhead is also used to refer to unrelated snakes around the world, all of which have a reddish head color, such as the Australian copperhead (Denisonia superba)—a type of cobra—and the Indian copperhead (Elaphe radiata), a kind of rat snake.

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