Sounds like a ssssteal. A beautiful five-bedroom house in Idaho for only $109,000. It comes with a tiny catch: The house is infested with thousands of live, writhing garter snakes.

UPDATE: We Were Told Snake Infestation Was “Made Up”

One realtor is trying to offload the property, which went into foreclosure after the previously family got sick of the snakes and fled the premises. The realtor hopes the price drop will help, but it may not be enough. Even non snake-infested houses are having a hard time getting sold in this market.

“I guess I need a snake lover,” he told The Daily Mail. “Or someone with multiple mongooses.”

Previous owners described waking up in the middle of the night with snakes in their bed, finding snakes climbing up the walls all the time, and finding piles of snakes in crawlspaces. Just walking around the yard uncovered enough snakes to fill a bucket,

It’s likely no amount of mongooses or poison will do the trick, as the house was probably built on top of snake den, Joe Collins, director of the Center for North American Herpetology in Lawrence, Kansas told The Daily Mail. Even if most of the snakes were gotten rid of, some snakes would probably remain and give birth again, starting the cycle anew. Also, garter snakes leave phermone trails leading the way to a den, which attracts other snakes from other areas to converge on the den.

“Snakes have a great deal of fidelity to the den site,” said Collins. “They’re born near there and the animals return each fall to den up and avoid the cold…People always build first and never ask about an area and whether there is a snake den before they do. Afterward, it’s too late: the house is there, the snakes are there and people are there. It’s a great set up for a wonderful time.” For the snakes, that is.

Here’s a video done by the local news on one of the previous homeowners before they dumped the property:For sale, the house with a very strange hiss-tory: Desperate realtor slashes price on Idaho home infested with SNAKES [Daily Mail] (Thanks to GitEmSteveDave!)

FOLLOWUP
We Were Told Snake Infestation Was “Made Up”

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