REXBURG, Idaho — They slithered behind the walls at night and released foul-smelling musk into the drinking water. And they were so numerous that Ben Sessions once killed 42 in a single day.
Shortly after buying their dream home, Sessions and his wife discovered it was infested with thousands of garter snakes, which are nonpoisonous. For the next three months, their growing family lived as if in a horror movie. The five-bedroom house on nearly two pastoral acres in rural Idaho seemed like a steal at less than $180,000. But the young couple soon learned they would be sharing the home with reptiles at least 2 feet long that had crawled into every crevice.
The Sessions family eventually declared bankruptcy and abandoned the property.
Several months ago, the house briefly went back on the market until the Animal Planet network featured the Sessionses’ story in its “Infested” series. The listing was removed, and it has stayed off the market while Chase decides what to do with it.
The home was probably built on top of a winter snake den or hibernaculum, where snakes gather in large numbers to hibernate, said Rob Cavallaro, a wildlife biologist with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.
