‘I was born with it’: The origins and evolution of the man known as ‘The Snake Chaser’

At 7:30 a.m., as the sun begins to rise over the Grand Strand, Russell Cavender feeds his pet emu Emmitt, one of the most exotic of the 50 or so animals that he calls family on his land in Wampee.

Along with his wife, Christine, he feeds the goats and the mini-horse, the pig, the crows, the peacock, the owl. A handful of hungry mouths begin to eat breakfast as many more await, somewhat patiently. He talks to each animal as he feeds them as if they were his children.

This is a routine morning for the man known as “The Snake Chaser.”

“We get our stuff together in the morning, and then I come home and eat, and I basically do the same thing all over again,” Cavender said. “If I could just do the animal thing here at the house and retire, I think I’d be very, very happy. But that’s still years from now.”

As the area’s most well-known animal control contractor, there’s still plenty of important work to be done, with all kinds of snakes, raccoons, alligators and other animals wandering onto peoples’ property.

“You’re looking at someone who does this because he has a passion for wildlife and animals. Altogether, I mean, I’ve always, since I can remember, wanted to work with animals. And I’ve done it,” Cavender said. “I don’t think I could do anything else. I’m pretty sure I could do something and I would do it well, but I don’t think I’d be happy. I know I’m happy doing this.”

Cavender kisses his wife as he grabs his lunch and walks out the door to make the 100-foot walk to a mobile home on his property, “The Snake Chaser offices,” as he prepares to see what the rest of this day has in store.

‘Superman’ is here

As Russell Cavender moves across his property to his office, “Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin can be heard coming from his hip. It’s his ringtone, and it’s been playing off and on since before the sun came up.

“This job is the phone,” Cavender says with a smile. An understatement, as Led Zeppelin once again interrupts him.

Cavender walks into his office where his six employees, including Christine and his son Hayden, wait for their assignments for the day. One employee will be spraying for snakes at an apartment complex, a monthly service The Snake Chaser provides. Another will be responding to a snake call. A third will be dealing with somebody’s mole problem.

“There’s no such thing as an ordinary day. It’s never ever, ever, ever ordinary; to me, it’s just repetition,” Cavender said. “I mean, I do the same thing over and over, but not the same thing every day.”

After the meeting adjourns, Cavender returns some calls and then hits the road. The first call is for a snake spotted in someone’s garage in Ocean Isle Beach, just across the North Carolina state line, which is among the team’s northernmost parts of a work area that goes southward into Georgetown County. As he pulls into the driveway, he receives applause from a distraught wife who’s been impatiently waiting.

“I’ve actually joked with my wife before, I’ve said, ‘ You know, sometimes I feel like Superman,’” Cavender said. “That is one of the most rewarding things, because I make people happy. You know, I’m there because I want to make people happy. I’ve always done that, I’ve always been a little bit of a narcissist in that way, I like the ego trip I get from it, sure.”

A lot of Cavender’s job is responding to calls from residents who are deathly afraid of snakes, even when there isn’t one.

“I’ve been paid to catch hacksaw blades, garden hoses,” Cavender said. “One guy called me about a snake in his garage. I told him to keep an eye on it until I got there; it took me about 45 minutes. When I got there, he told me it hadn’t moved. It was a stick. The guy watched a stick for 45 minutes.”

Most of what the Snake Chaser does is the removal of animals such as alligators, snakes, coyotes, bats and more from residential and commercial properties. But his crew also handles repairs, cleanups and remediation.

However, within the last six months, the Grand Strand has had close-up encounters with two animals Cavender does not deal with.

“The two things that I don’t deal with is marine wildlife and bears,” he said.

The successful business has allowed the Cavenders to live in a nice house on a large acreage of property where he, his family and many exotic and typically domestic pets call home. It’s a good life.

“I didn’t think it would be quite as big as it’s gotten, but, yes, there’s always been growth,” said Christine Cavender, who Russell met fittingly, in a pet store. “He loves what he does, and when you love what you do … it’s a job, but it’s more rewarding.”

Origins of the Snake Chaser

Long before he was able to build a business and profit from catching animals, Cavender was doing it pro bono.

“It literally was a hobby,” said Cavender, who said he’s been fascinated with animals since he was a child.

Years later, a neighbor asked him to catch a snake in a garage, which netted Cavender $20, his first profit for his trade.

“I think that might’ve been the catalyst of where it all came to,” Cavender said.

August will mark 26 years of Cavender doing what he loves professionally. In that time, the name “Snake Chaser” has become synonymous with wildlife removal along the Grand Strand.

“A friend of mine, basically he said, ‘Boy, you like to chase snakes.’ So when we were trying to come up with a name, that just kind of clicked in my head,” he said. “In the beginning, I only did snakes. I had no idea that a nuisance wildlife operator’s world existed. I literally got thrown into it.

“I was asked, ‘Well, since you can do this with snakes, can you go get a squirrel out of an attic?’ I said ‘Sure. I’ll figure out a way to do it.’ Same thing with raccoons. No one taught me how to catch an alligator. I learned that by myself. I think I was born with it, to be honest with you.”

The trade has trickled down through the family. Hayden Cavender would go with his dad as a child to look for snakes in the woods behind their home, and now is slowly introducing wildlife to his baby daughter.

“I believe when I was an infant I was holding a snake. I caught my first one by myself when I was 3,” Hayden Cavender said. “I started my daughter off the same way. She held her first snake here a couple weeks ago.”

Hayden Cavender said his dad’s business allowed him some unique experiences growing up.

“It was awesome,” Hayden Cavender said. “ I’d come home and there would be all kinds of new animals at the house, stuff to get into. It was amazing.”

Christine Cavender said she initially worried about her husband’s dangerous job. Over time, though, that apprehension subsided.

“I’m never ever surprised anymore about what’s at home when I get there,” she said. “ If it has had feathers or fur or scales, it’s been at my house at some point in time.”

Not ‘sent by the devil’

Cavender’s business was born from his love for animals. Between home and work, he’s always around some sort of creature, whether it’s Emmitt, the fawn he saved from the wild or a perceived pest he’s removed from someone’s property.

But that affection recently cost him a small portion of his business, something he says is no big deal.

He recently received an unexpected call from the Director of Wildlife with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, who wanted a face-to-face meeting with Cavender regarding an alligator with an arrow sticking out of its back that he’d caught.

“I know what this is about,” Cavender said as the call came in.

He was told that his DNR permit would be revoked due to his handling of the wounded alligator he caught, one that he delivered to a vet, through a series of miscommunications by multiple parties, without DNR’s knowledge.

Cavender said he can still catch alligators for anyone except DNR.

“It’s not gonna hurt my business at all, it’s just gonna hurt the alligators, ‘cause whoever comes behind me, I’m sure they’ll probably be someone who will kill them, and maybe harvest them. But that’s not something I was ever going to do, and never had an intention on ever doing,” Cavender said, adding that the money he makes working with the DNR is a very small percentage of his profits.

Growing up with animals the way Russell Cavender did, he developed a deep love and respect for them that many people will never fully realize.

He grew up catching snakes and rats, keeping them as pets. His first pet was a boa constrictor.

He said he’s never suffered from ophidiophobia, the fear of snakes.

“It’s a very common fear,” he said. “Of course, we’re in the South, a lot of people are very religious. They think, of course, they see a snake it’s a serpent, you know, sent by the devil.”

Conversely, the Cavender family sees those and other species as animals displaced by the increasing development that’s overtaking natural habitats.

”They were put here for a reason like we were,” Hayden Cavender said. “We’re the ones that are tearing out their environment, taking away their homes. They don’t have anywhere else to go.”

While most of The Snake Chaser’s work involves removing these animals from people’s homes, he says the most important part of his job is protecting the displaced intruders.

“A lot of people, you know, they’ll see a corn snake and call it a copperhead. A lot of people have no clue, so they immediately just simply go right straight to, ‘This animal is just bad, it’s scary,’” Russell Cavendar said.

Instead of running for the hoe or grabbing the shotgun, take a breath, snap a picture and contact a professional, Cavender said.

“There’s no such thing as a snake that will chase you,” he said. “There’s a lot of people out there that really do not need to fear these animals. But if you do, call me.”

This story was originally published July 6, 2019 at 3:47 PM.