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SANTA FE, N.M. — Santa Fe County is seeing a population explosion of snakes this year.

Animal control officers in the county report a surge in calls this spring and summer from residents asking if the officers can come out and remove snakes that are getting a little too close to home, according to a post on Santa Fe County’s Facebook page.

Most of the calls are for bull snakes, nonvenomous critters that can alarm people by their size. Adults average 4 to 6 feet long, but some have been recorded up to 8 feet long.

Less often, officers have been called out to handle rattlesnakes, which can cause harm to pets and humans if they bite and inject venom into the wound.

But both reptiles are helpful in consuming rodents, which can serve as carriers for germs such as Hantavirus that can infect and even kill humans.

So why the population explosion?

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Blame it on (or give credit to) last summer’s ample rains, which helped give rise to a large quantity of seeds that took root and exploded into a mass of weeds, whose seeds in turn have kept the rodent population fat and healthy this year.

In turn, those rampant rodents are nourishing the belly-crawlers that feed on them.

When animal control officers are called out to calm nervous residents who don’t want to share their house or yard with a snake, they don’t kill the critter. Instead, they trap or capture the snake and then release it into a more remote area where, with any luck, it can continue to thrive and keep rodent populations under control while not crossing paths as often with hapless humans.