Amber Hall had saved money for more than a decade to purchase her first home. She wanted one large enough to accommodate her and her two children and a backyard for her two Labrador retrievers to play in.
When she toured a four-bedroom Colorado house in February, it was everything she wanted.
But a few weeks after moving into the home in April, one of Hall's dogs crouched near her and began walking slowly to the corner of the garage. Hall thought a spider may have scared Winston, but as she followed him, she saw snakes slithering behind a hole in the wall.
Staring at the wall, Hall soon noticed more garter snakes and screamed. She ran into the house and frantically called animal control.
"I was petrified," Hall, 42, told The Washington Post. "I am very scared of snakes."
Since Hall made that terrifying discovery about two weeks ago, snake wranglers have helped her catch between 20 and 30 snakes inside the garage. But almost every day, she finds at least one more. After using her life savings to purchase the house, Hall said she can't afford to move again, although she isn't sure her family will ever be at rest in their new home.
"I don't think that I will ever, ever be able to live here peacefully by any means," Hall said.
The real estate agent and lender told Hall they didn't know snakes were in the house, she said. Pest inspectors have since told her they believe hundreds of snakes have been living in a den under the house for about two years. Hall said she must tear apart her deck and the surrounding concrete to reach the den, a service she said she can't currently afford.
"I used everything I had to buy this house, between the down payment and the inspection and, you know, getting everything I needed to move in," Hall said.
There are still boxes in Hall's garage that she hasn't unpacked, because she has avoided the area as much as possible. She says she doesn't have the money to temporarily relocate, so she's saving up for someone to get to the snake den under her deck.
Hall said her fear of snakes started as a child. At her childhood home in Denver, her younger brother had a pet snake that often escaped its enclosure. Once, Hall was putting on a pair of pants when she noticed the snake inside them.
When she became a single mother in September 2009, Hall set a goal to buy a house that her children could grow and play in. They were raised in rented apartments and townhouses as Hall saved money from her nursing job.
She found her dream house in Centennial, Colo., and put down a $21,000 down payment in March. She and her family moved from Aurora, Colo., in early April and had everything moved into the home by April 10.
On April 25, Hall was unpacking when her dog, Winston, alerted her to the snakes. She saw about a half-dozen of them slithering through a hole in a wall in the corner of her garage. She placed her hands on the wall and felt movement inside.
Garter snakes are harmless, but the ones in Hall's home are between two and four feet long, she said. Over the next few days, Hall said, she saw snakes sneaking into a wall cavity through a small ditch under the back of the house. She added that they mostly travel in the wall between the garage and the house.
Hall said she later noticed snakes in the door jamb between the garage and the backyard. Knowing she had walked through and touched that door many times before terrified her.
Hall called animal-control services and, with the assistance of snake wranglers, she placed glue traps throughout her garage. The wranglers have released all of the captured snakes into the wild.
This isn't the first time animals have invaded a home. In December, about 700 pounds of acorns stored by woodpeckers were found in a wall of a California house. About 450,000 honeybees lived in a Pennsylvania home for nearly 35 years before they were relocated in 2021.
Hall worries a snake will appear while she's sleeping or in the bathroom. Although the snakes are usually in the garage, she has found a few inside the house. Hall said her 13-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter are also frightened but have been able to find humor in the situation - a little while after the discovery, they started to prank Hall by placing a rubber snake around the house.
While ridding her house of a snake den isn't the first home-improvement job she had in mind, Hall said it's the top item on her to-do list.
Each time Hall sees a new snake, she said she feels just as startled as she did on April 25. Many garter snakes have babies in the summer, so Hall is anxious the problem will worsen.
"Now I look in every nook and cranny," she said.
Glue traps have stopped some of the snakes in Amber Hall's house. MUST CREDIT: Photo by Amber Hall