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~ 9 years ago
Jun 5, '15 7:23pm
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Kinda of long but this is what gives me the heebie jeebies. They need to stay outside.......This was in the paper this weekWelcome to 'The Snake House': Lawsuit claims home infested with snakes. Jeff
and Jody Brooks bought a home in the Beechwood on the Burley
neighborhood in December and moved out in April due to an infestation of
snakes. They have gutted most of the home trying to rid the property of
the snakes. (By Paul W. Gillespie, Staff) By Tim Prudente tprudente@capgaznews.com contact the reporter Does Annapolis have “a snake house� Lawsuit claims Annapolis house infested with snakes Many families don't know these live in their basements
A machete leans against the wall inside the front door.Jeff
Brooks lifts it first, upon stepping inside, and eyes the rafters
exposed after crews removed the ceiling drywall. He scans the living
room, looking past his children's toys, and surveys the floors and the
steps to the basement — nothing.Jeff, with his machete, leads two lawyers to the basement."Let him go first," says his wife, Jody Brooks, from the doorway.Because their Annapolis-area home, the couple says, is infested with snakes.Black rat snakes wintered in the walls and tunneled through the insulation. Snake paths ran from the basement to the roof.Jeff
and Jody Brooks bought the house on the Broadneck Peninsula in
December. They filed a lawsuit two weeks ago seeking $2 million and
claiming the real estate agent hid her knowledge of the snakes. Caption Snake House By Paul W. Gillespie, Staff Jody
and Jeff Brooks talk about their snake problem. Jeff and Jody Brooks
bought a home in the Beechwood on the Burley neighborhood in December
and moved out in April due to an infestation of snakes. They have gutted
most of the home trying to rid the property of the snakes. Caption Snake House By Paul W. Gillespie, Staff Jeff
and Jody Brooks bought a home in the Beechwood on the Burley
neighborhood in December and moved out in April due to an infestation of
snakes. They have gutted most of the home trying to rid the property of
the snakes. The
smallest were hatchlings, several inches. The largest was 7 feet, they
say, and found last month in the basement, directly below a
pink-and-lime bedroom where their infant daughter slept.This
modest rancher in the St. Margarets neighborhood of Beechwood on the
Burley was supposed to be their 20-year home: an office downstairs for
Jody, separate bedrooms for the children, Thomas and Lilly, and a
backyard to romp around, all within a bicycle ride of Jody's parents'
home.It was a way-into-the-neighborhood house for a family starting out.The couple closed in December for $410,000.They lasted until April. They were driven out, they say, by snakes.The
Brookses are seeking more than four times the price of the house in
their lawsuit against real estate agent Barbara Van Horn, of Annapolis;
Champion Realty Inc.; and former homeowner Joan Broseker, of Severna
Park.Broseker is Van Horn's mother.lRelated
NewsChasing Dusty: Family, volunteers search for runaway dogSee all related8 "Van
Horn refused to keep a lockbox on the premises while acting as the
listing agent and would personally unlock the home and turn on the
lights and, upon information and belief, check for snake activity before
anyone entered," according to the lawsuit filed May 19 in the Circuit
Court for Anne Arundel County.Van Horn, contacted at her Annapolis home Wednesday, declined to comment.Her
attorney, Barbara Palmer, of the Annapolis law firm Blumenthal, Delavan
Powers & Palmer, also represents Champion Realty in the case."Champion
Realty has a policy against making public comments about matters
involved in ongoing litigation," Palmer wrote in an email.They have about a month to submit to the courts a response to the lawsuit.The Brookses, however, aren't the first family driven away from 631 Truxton Road.Another family called it "the snake house."A common house guestThe black rat snake can live 25 years, grow to 7 feet long and still squeeze through a gap no larger than a half-dollar coin. Search widens as 'peacock situation' continues The most common snake in Maryland homes is an acrobat, able to scale a brick wall and slip beneath.It's
also a cosmopolitan sort, climbing into birdhouses, crawling into homes
through dryer vents, along water pipes, even cable wires.They're
content, in most cases, to curl in some warm corner and spend the
winter unnoticed. Females prefer mulch and woodpiles to lay eggs, eight
to 12 per nest.In spite of their black sheen, the snakes aren't poisonous and are mostly harmless, unless you're a mouse or a rat.There's
no evidence, despite the myth, that black rat snakes mate with
poisonous copperheads, says Scott Smith, a biologist with the Maryland
Department of Natural Resources."In rural Maryland, a big chunk probably have black rat snakes in their homes and they don't even know," he says.
cComments
Sounds like a euphemism of the Obama Administration. zazzle.com/FirstPrinciples*
Teddy Novak
at 8:49 AM June 04, 2015
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Smith's
office receives nearly 200 reports a year of snakes found indoors.
About half the cases, he says, involve black rat snakes.The
Brookses say most, and maybe all, the snakes pulled from their rancher
were black rat snakes. They also found skins in the walls and
coffee-ground stains of scat: snake feces.By November, these
snakes are seeking a warm winter den. They prefer to sleep together,
sometimes in large groups. And snakes may return to an established den
year after year.Smith has not seen the Brookses' house.Still, the rancher, he says, sounds like a snake den.Black rat snakes also release a musk to signal a den.'Snake house'"The place smelled terrible when we moved in," Jay Kehoe says. "We cleaned pretty much right away."The year was 2008, when he arrived from California with his family to teach sailing at Annapolis Yacht Club. Introducing "The Animal Daily Planet" His
wife, Amy, was hired at The Gunston School in Centreville. And the
rental house at 631 Truxton Road was close and affordable. It offered
schools the couple preferred for their 6-year-old daughter, also a
neighborhood bounded by farmland.The rancher was owned by Joan
Broseker, according to property records. She did not return a message
left Wednesday at her Severna Park home. Van Horn lives next to the
rancher and was the landlady.Soon after arriving, Jay Kehoe says, he saw a snake."We
called Barb and she said there might be one or two," he says. "We never
lived in the country. So we kind of figured: 'OK, people live with
snakes.'"He once pulled a 31/2 -foot snake from the wall outside, he says. He found more snakes, also skins and scat.Most of the snakes, he says, were 3 to 4 feet.Still, the Kehoes rented five years, until 2013. Then they moved to Chicago; Jay now works at the Chicago Yacht Club.After
leaving, he still wondered about rumors that a previous owner kept an
aquarium full of snakes that escaped into the walls. That, however,
isn't true. The house was built in 1982 by George Sackett. He married Van Horn's sister, Lynn.Today, he works in marketing for St. Louis Community College in Missouri.Over 20 years, he raised a family in the rancher on Truxton Road."I
had only two experiences with snakes in that house," he says. "One was a
snakeskin in the basement. The other was a very small black snake the
kids found in the yard."He had no pet snakes.The house went to his former mother-in-law, Joan Broseker, about a decade ago, according to property records.By
August 2013, a contractor and teacher, Rich and Kim Booker, had moved
in with two daughters and one son. Their oldest boy was away at college."The snake house," Rich Booker calls it.Rich and Kim are not parties in the lawsuit filed by Jeff and Jody Brooks.The couples, however, have been sharing their encounters with snakes in the house.Rich
remembers his first week in August 2013. He says his young daughter
came downstairs to say she found a worm on her window. It was a 3-inch
hatchling, Rich says.
"We
didn't see anything for a while (in winter) and the weather started
warming up again. Then, all of a sudden, we're finding snakes
downstairs, like big snakes, like 41/2 -foot black snakes," he says.Rich says Van Horn hired an exterminator, who treated the house. But the snakes remained."You would see scat on the floor," Kim says. "I'm like bleaching it every day. I'm like, 'This is disgusting.'"The tenant-landlord relationship grew strained. Rich says he left a dead snake at Van Horn's door. Snakes
were found to be nesting and tunneling within the walls of an Annapolis
home in the St. Margaret's neighborhood of Beechwood on the Burley,
said Jeff and Jody Brooks, who bought the house in December. This
spring, the couple said, has been horrifying with snakes awaking from
hibernation to crawl through the walls and ceiling. The couple is suing
the real estate company and realtor for failing, the Brooks claim, to
warn them about the snakes. (By Paul W. Gillespie, Staff) In
May 2014, sewage backed up in the rancher and Van Horn hired a plumber,
according to a complaint Kim filed with the county Health Department.
That complaint mentions a "nest of snakes" in the basement.Rich sealed off the basement to trap any snakes downstairs.Kim saw one climbing the stairs when she was home with her teenage daughter. They ran outside.Neighbor
John Scarborough removed that snake. He says he has never found a snake
inside his home across the street, where he has lived 35 years. He has
occasionally seen a snake in his yard.Scarborough says his children, while growing up, called the wetlands beside the rancher across the street the "spooky swamp."lRelated
NewsChasing Dusty: Family, volunteers search for runaway dogSee all related8 Rich says that in two weeks, he found about 10 snakes around the house."I was done."The family left in June 2014.Six months later, Jeff and Jody bought the rancher.'Pulling back the onion peel'In the basement now, Jeff taps a heating duct with his machete. He found the first snakeskins on top.The family left last month to stay with Jody's parents in the neighborhood.Jody
graduated from St. Mary's High School in 2001, before meeting Jeff at
Methodist University in North Carolina. Two months before buying, they
heard from a neighbor the house had snakes. Bags
of insulation removed from the home sit in the driveway. This is only a
small portion of what was removed. Jeff and Jody Brooks bought a home
in the Beechwood on the Burley neighborhood in December and moved out in
April due to an infestation of snakes. They have gutted most of the
home trying to rid the property of the snakes. (By Paul W. Gillespie,
Staff) "Van
Horn assured Jody Brooks' mother that there were no snakes living in
the house and the neighbor's statements were untrue," according to the
lawsuit.A response to the lawsuit has not yet been filed by Van Horn and her attorney.Van Horn told the Brookses she hired an exterminator to perform snake treatment and an infrared study, according to the lawsuit.In November, the house was inspected: No sign of snakes.The
couple closed December 29, 2014. Four-year-old Thomas picked the swing
set for the backyard (the biggest one) and they painted his room red and
blue to match his rug, decorated with trucks.Then, the coffee-ground stains, the snakeskins in the basement.
cComments
Sounds like a euphemism of the Obama Administration. zazzle.com/FirstPrinciples*
Teddy Novak
at 8:49 AM June 04, 2015
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That musk.An
8-inch rat snake was found on a sticky pad in the basement. The couple
began a snake program with Home Paramount Pest Control. Exterminators
found more skins and scat."It was literally pulling back the onion peel," Jody says.The
weather was warming. On April 3, Thomas spotted a 3-foot snake coming
out of the house, between the brick and soffit, she says.The next
week, Jeff says, he found the 7-foot snake in the basement.
Exterminators killed that snake and left. An hour later, according to
the lawsuit, a 4-foot snake crawled from woodwork in the basement. Snake
skins they have found in the home. Jeff and Jody Brooks bought a home
in the Beechwood on the Burley neighborhood in December and moved out in
April due to an infestation of snakes. They have gutted most of the
home trying to rid the property of the snakes. (By Paul W. Gillespie,
Staff) The walls of their new home concealed snake dens, the Brookses say.And snakes sheltering for winter were waking up."I've never seen anything like it," says Stephen Kulp, manager of an Annapolis branch of Home Paramount.Crews
gutted the finished basement, removing drywall and insulation, finding a
4-foot snake and tunnels, according to the lawsuit. Crews moved
upstairs, taking out ceiling drywall and attic insulation, finding dens,
tunnels and scat, according to the lawsuit.A snake inspector determined the house was infested and unsafe for children, according to the lawsuit.The couple found eight snakes before leaving, they say. Jeff and Jody are suing for $2 million — or to rescind the purchase and return the house.The rancher, they say, is uninhabitable and worthless."You're staring at financial ruin," Jody says. "What do you do with two kids? This was our 20-year house. Now, we're maxed out."She remembers unpacking in this basement, feeling sentimental and smelling worn sheets.Then, rustling overhead. She heard it before: just water running or children upstairs.Her eyes well up as she remembers the moment of realization.It was the sound, she says, of a snake belly rubbing across the ceiling.CorrectionA previous version of this story incorrectly reported the dates Jay and Amy Kehoe rented the house. Copyright © 2015, CapitaUpdate from me... Someone needs to kick tha *** of the Realtor & her mother........D bags. 4951
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