Kentucky couple's dream home had a secret nickname: 'The snake house'

SALVISA, Ky. — What started as a dream home for a Mercer County couple quickly turned into what they describe as a living nightmare after they began finding snakes throughout the property.

Jessica Perry and her husband closed on their Salvisa home Aug. 5 after spotting the property on Zillow.

“When I walked in the home, I immediately fell in love with it,” Perry said. “It’s every woman’s cottage-core dream house, so we put in an offer that day.”

For the first few weeks, Perry said everything seemed perfect. Then, the snakes began appearing.

“Shortly after a few weeks is when we started seeing the snakes,” she said.

Perry said that during the first week after spotting a snake, the family found two adults and several juvenile snakes in the basement.

Over the next several months, she said they encountered dozens more rat snakes. Rat snakes are nonvenomous constrictors that feed on animals including rodents and birds, as well as eggs.

Perry said she contacted an exterminator, who placed snake traps in the basement and around the home. The family also brought in a contractor to tear down the porch in an effort to find where the snakes were coming from.

That work uncovered what Perry believes had been a longstanding den.

“We found snake skin sheds going into the foundation of it,” Perry said. “He busted out the middle and then found multiple, multiple snake eggs that had made a den for what looked like several years.”

Even after the area was cleaned out and openings around the home were sealed, the problem did not completely disappear. Perry said she found another snake, about 6 feet long, in the basement just days ago.

Perry said the previous owner did not disclose a snake infestation before the couple bought the home. She later began talking with neighbors and researching the property’s previous owners.

“We had found out that another neighbor had grown up in this house as a child and that their family member had owned the home, and that as a child he was in the basement and there were snakes in the basement,” Perry said.

She said she eventually spoke with a former owner who told her the property was nicknamed “the snake house.”

Now, the family says it is dealing not only with the paranoia of repeatedly finding snakes but also the financial cost of trying to address the problem.

Perry said they've already spent a couple thousand dollars on the attempted mitigations. And additional repairs could cost thousands of dollars. One contractor told her part of the basement may need significant work, which she said could cost $4,000 to $5,000 to replace.

“And quite frankly, we just don’t have it,” Perry said.

For the Perrys, the home they fell in love with only months ago has now become a costly and unsettling problem they are still trying to solve.

"We believe that God put us in this situation for a reason. He blessed us with this home, and we're gonna do everything that we can to, you know, mitigate the issue," explains Perry. "We want to raise our son here, and this is a good community. We love our neighbors, and we're just hoping that we can get it under control.

Perry's friend has started a GoFundMe to help raise funds, so they can afford to fix the issue.

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