A Gorman rancher who had seen only a handful of snakes in his 18 years on the property made up for lost time Tuesday, when he uncovered dozens of rattlesnakes nesting underneath an abandoned hunting shed.

Rancher Bobby Cowan was at the ranch, about 80 miles southwest of Fort Worth, when friend Levi Kirkland saw a snake slither under an old shed, Cowan said in a Facebook post Tuesday that has been viewed more than 2.5 million times.

When the men lifted the shed to uncover the snake and kill it, they discovered a nest with at least 30 rattlesnakes underneath it.

The men used trash cans and long sticks to move at least 36 of the rattlesnakes to a part of the ranch farther from cattle, Cowan told the San Antonio Express-News, but he thinks a dozen more may have escaped.