A Redcliff company can provide a rattlesnake risk assessment for your property and install a fence if there's a significant danger. (Photo Courtesy of Ross Lavigne)

By Chris Brown

Snakes on a Plain

Redcliff company fences off snake danger

Aug 14, 2020 | 4:19 PM

REDCLIFF, AB – Snakes are a part of life for anyone living in southern Alberta, but one a lot of people could do without. A Redcliff company is helping reduce the conflict between people and the slithery serpents.

Snakes on a Plain offers yard risk assessments, snake fencing and education from the Medicine Hat area to Lethbridge and everywhere in between.

“People that are along the coulees, within the river hills or have had experiences of having rattlesnakes in their backyard before would be the ones that we would suggest have a risk assessment,” says Sheri. “For the most part most homeowners are just fine but for people like us who are right on a coulee and have kids that go in the backyard or dogs or other pets, sometimes snake fencing isn’t a bad idea for them.”

A wildlife and conservation enthusiast who has travelled extensively through North, Central and South America to study venomous snakes, co-owner Sheri Monk has years of rattlesnake experience.

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She and wife and co-owner Alyssa will inspect your yard and property, its location compared to migration routes and snake dens and pinpoint anything that may attract rattlesnakes.

If recommended, Snakes on a Plain can install snake fencing around your yard.

“Basically what it is is a galvanized steel mesh and usually, we do quarter-inch so it prohibits even the newborn rattlesnakes from being able to get in,” says Sheri. “So it’s either trenched in or secured to concrete in some other fashion and it goes up either three or four feet depending on how deep we dig it in or if its sort of at surface level and attached to concrete and it prohibits the snakes from being able to get under it or through it.”

Sheri says the fencing doesn’t work for bullsnakes, but is highly-effective for rattlesnakes, which she says is the only snake in the area that poses a risk to humans.

Snakes on a Plain is also certified to provide snake relocation services.

Sheri adds that everything Snakes on a Plain does is conservation-minded, from the snake fences to the catios they also can build and bat houses they will begin offering next year.

“As much as we want to protect people’s kids and their dogs we also know that human conflict with rattlesnakes often doesn’t turn out well for the snake. Same in mind with catios. It keeps cats from getting hit by cars and attacked by owls and getting in fights with other cats,” Sheri says. “Hopefully for every project we complete we can say that we’ve done something good for the wildlife in the area, particularly at the urban-rural interface.”

Sheri says the spiders were the start of the family’s interest in snakes. When their son was little, she would catch spiders for him but because of poor vision, he couldn’t focus on them. She brought home a tarantula thinking he would definitely be able to see it and the fondness for snakes took off from there.

Sheri began researching spiders, which turned into researching snakes and the rest is history, she says.

“We know not everybody’s a fan but we love rattlesnakes and all of our family vacations have been spent looking for different species of rattlesnakes,” she says.

For more on Snakes on a Plain you can check the website or find them on Facebook.