Snakes in the Basement: Here’s Why

Updated on: July 23rd 2026

Quick Overview

• Detect snakes by shed skins, tracks, droppings, musky odors, rustling, or disappearing rodents
• Basements attract snakes with cool shelter, abundant rodents, and easy foundation entry points
• Snakes squeeze through small foundation cracks using their highly flexible skeletal structure
• Prevent infestations by removing rodents, sealing gaps, maintaining yards, and reducing snake attractants
• Leave potentially dangerous snakes to professionals for safe identification, removal, and long-term prevention

If you’ve lived in a home with a basement for any length of time, there’s a good chance you’ve seen a snake there.

Read on to find out how they get in, why they’re there and what you can do to stop them in the future from going there…

Signs of a Snake Situation

Use your senses to detect any of these signs of snakes in your basement:

• Finding shed skins
• Seeing distinct slithering tracks in dusty areas
• Spotting small, dark droppings often containing bits of bone or fur
• Smelling a lingering, unusual musky odor
• Hearing faint rustling noises in crawl spaces, wall voids, or behind storage boxes
• Noticing a sudden, unexplained disappearance of a previous rodent problem

What Snakes are Dangerous in New England

Most local snakes are harmless and usually this far north, they cause little direct threat to humans. That said, there are some more dangerous snakes that look very similar. So if in doubt, call us out. Because dangerous snakes should not be handled by anyone other than a professional.

Why Snakes View Your Basement as an Ideal Shelter

You may wonder why basements are so appealing to snakes.

Mice: Rodents are a key part of most snakes’ diets, particularly mice for the smaller serpents commonly seen in this area. And since mice are incredibly common home invaders, they can attract snakes inside if their populations are not kept under control. Mice reproduce rapidly: if you have 6 mice on day 1, you’ll have 360+ mice within 3 months.

Coolness: When it’s hot outside, snakes seek out somewhere chillier. As your basement is below grade it typically stays far cooler than rooms above ground, including the rest of your home.

How Do Snakes Get inside?

They get in through cracks and gaps in your foundations that may eventually start to appear. 

Why?
Because the older your house and the older your house’s foundation, the more cycles of expansion and contraction it’s gone through over the years as seasons change and the ground goes from frozen to thawed then frozen and back again. This naturally causes some shifting in the foundation, which home builders design residential structures to withstand, but it can create openings over time that let in snakes and other pests.

How a Flexible Skeleton Helps Snakes Squeeze Inside

As snakes have a very flexible skeletal system, with most of their bones being only ribs around a spinal column, they can contort their bodies and squeeze through extremely tight spaces. This is especially true of younger or smaller ones, like harmless garter snakes.

Strategize Against Snakes

To get rid of snakes from your basement, you need to remove rodents, seal entry points, maintain your yard, plus get into anti-snake daily habits…

Remove Rodents From Your Home to Get Rid of Snakes

Snakes don’t enter homes by accident. They are shy of humans. So they need a good reason to enter a structure.

If you’ve found a snake inside the home, the first question you should consider is if there may be rats, mice or squirrels living within the same four walls.

Rodents can be hard to find. But they usually leave clues such as droppings, urine stains, foul odor, and chewed wires or other gnaw markings.

Plus, if your pets act weird, they may be hearing and seeing things that you don’t. So it’s vital to contact a pest management professional right away. By removing rodents, any snakes will have little or no reason to re-enter your home.

Find and Seal Foundation Entry Points

Rodents are infamous for gnawing their way in. Snakes are cunning enough to follow them. Once the rodent populations are eliminated, closing these gaps and cracks in the foundation helps fortify your basement against future invasions of both the slithery invaders and their prey.

Yard Maintenance Secrets to Keep Serpents Away

Keep the grass and shrubs around your home neat and trimmed. Snakes love cool, dark places, so keeping grass short and bushes tidy minimizes the number of places near your home that snakes may find appealing. If they have no reason to hang out near your home, they’ll be less likely to stumble upon an opening. 

Simple Daily Habits that Prevent Snake Attractions

The more you do to make your house and yard unappealing to snakes, the less of a problem you’ll have. Here are some other ways to keep the snakes out:

• Avoid over-watering your lawn: Wet lawns can attract prey species, like frogs, toads, worms and slugs, that snakes love to munch on.
• Move the bird feeder: Not only do snakes occasionally snack on birds themselves, bird feeders leave seeds and other food debris everywhere, which attracts rodents.
• Feed your pets inside: Same principle as the bird feeder—spilled food attracts snake prey.
• Store firewood away from the house: Even a small stack offers enough cool, dark places for a snake to get cozy.
• Don’t over-landscape: Snakes and their prey love mulch, so the less of it you use, the fewer snake problems you’ll have.

Contact Our Team for Professional Snake Control

Got snakes? Get JP Pest Solutions. We don’t just eradicate the snakes you see, we also identify and eliminate the hidden nest. Plus, we provide prevention solutions like FlexiArmour to keep snakes out of your home for good.

Think you have snakes or rats in your home? Contact us today to discuss our control options to send both pests packing.