Montana Farmhouse Snake Infestation: Mother's Terror as Reptiles 'Drop' From Foundation

A Montana mother says her rented farmhouse has become a 'snake den,' with garter snakes dropping from the cinder block foundation into the property's entryway and basement on an almost daily basis over the past year.

Callie, 27, who lives in rural Montana and posts online as 'callieoverseas,' had long accepted the odd snake sighting as part of life in the countryside. There is a water source a few miles down the road and wildlife comes with the territory. But she told People that what began as a rare encounter in 2020 has escalated into what she now openly calls a full-blown infestation inside the family farmhouse, where she lives with her husband and young daughter.

The first snake turned up in 2020, when her mother-in-law was staying. It appeared in the entryway of the house. Later that year, another one was spotted by her own mother. At that stage, the family still treated it as an unpleasant but isolated quirk of an old rural property.

The moment that changed everything came in December 2020. It was winter, the sort of time when most people assume snakes are elsewhere, doing something else. Callie said she had gone to pick up her six-month-old daughter from a pack-and-play in the living room when she turned round and saw a small snake on the floor beside her.

'It totally caught me off guard with it being December,' she recalled. The timing and the proximity to her baby lodged in her mind.

Snake Infestation Turns Into Daily Ordeal

Over the next couple of years, the sightings kept coming. Harmless or not, they suggested the problem was not a one-off. By last summer, Callie said, the scale became impossible to downplay.

'Things were really bad last summer when we realised this is not just a scenario of a snake getting in the house on random because it's an old farmhouse,' she said. 'The house is a den.'

On at least one occasion, she said, there were around four snakes visible in the family's living space at the same time. The problem seems to centre on the structure of the home. The farmhouse sits on a cinder block foundation, with an entryway leading down into the basement lined by that same blockwork.

According to Callie, that design has essentially handed the snakes a ladder into the building. She says the front door upstairs is now sealed shut. Yet from the door leading down to the entryway, the family can watch the reptiles 'drop out of the foundation' into the access area outside.

She described seeing 'upwards of five, six or even more snakes a day.' In spring this year, the count reached eight in a single day, all dropping from the foundation wall, according to her account.

None of this involves venomous species, she is careful to stress. They are garter snakes, common across many parts of North America and widely regarded as benign pest-controllers that feed on insects and small animals. Friends and strangers alike repeat the same line to her.

'They're just garter snakes, and they eat lots of bugs. People tell me all the time, "Don't worry about them, they're harmless," but there's still my irrational fear,' she said. 'I would never touch them. I don't want them in my house.'

Online Fundraiser Puts Snake Infestation Under Spotlight

What might have remained a miserable but private ordeal has been pulled into the glare of social media. Posting videos and updates of the Montana farmhouse snake infestation, Callie has built a sizeable audience following what she calls her 'snake journey.'

Part of the reason is financial. She has launched an appeal to raise $75,000 to move into a different home. Commenters, many of them evidently city dwellers, do not hold back on offering solutions from behind their screens. The most common reaction she sees is blunt.

'The most frequent comment I get is to "burn it down, and move out,"' she said. Others ask how she can possibly stay or how she manages to sleep at night.

There is, though, a less theatrical side to the response. Mixed in among the horror are messages from people who say they have lived through something similar in isolated parts of Montana and beyond.

'It's just wild because I never knew,' she said. 'We've definitely heard of people having snakes in their house in Montana before, because there are so many areas where it's just so remote, but I've never heard of so many people having true infestations like this, and I've got tons of DMs from people who have.'

Her situation is also more constrained than many armchair advisers realise. Her husband works as a ranch hand, and the farmhouse forms part of his pay package, which ties their housing directly to his job.

'It's never been about neglect, in terms of the owners of the house,' she insisted. Local infrastructure is sparse and options for specialist pest control or rapid rehousing are limited. Instead, the family has finally secured a contractor, who she says has visited two or three times in a week, to plan major renovations aimed at sealing off the foundation and tackling the den itself.