GOLD CANYON, Ariz. (KNXV\/CNN) – A retired Phoenix police officer traded catching criminals for catching rattlesnakes, but his recent find in Gold Canyon, Arizona, is a real surprise.<\/p>\n
Phil Roberts did not get physically bitten by a snake, but metaphorically speaking, he got infected with the love of capturing snakes.<\/p>\n
He has caught and released more than 85 rattlesnakes over the past year.<\/p>\n
All this comes after his crosshairs were aimed at a different kind of threat in the Phoenix Police Department\u2019s Violent Crimes Bureau for more than 30 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter 33 years in the department, I wanted to do something a little bit more safer than being a police officer, so I became a rattlesnake wrangler,\u201d Roberts said.<\/p>\n
This is what retirement looks like for Roberts: taking calls from friends and neighbors in the Gold Canyon area, removing rattlesnakes for free.<\/p>\n
\u201cI appreciate neighbors looking after neighbors,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
One of those neighbors at first thought the white snake was a walking stick. Good thing they didn\u2019t reach for it and instead reached out to Phil.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026This is so rare you wouldn\u2019t believe it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Roberts posted about this capture on social media.<\/p>\n
Bryan Hughes of Rattlesnake Solutions, the largest snake relocation and prevention business in the U.S., said that the reptile community collectively lost their minds when they saw it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhenever we get an interesting animal, our inbox just goes nuts with people wanting it,\u201d Hughes said.<\/p>\n
More testing needs to be done to determine what kind of snake this is, but Hughes said initial research led him to believe it is a tyrosinase-positive albino snake, exceedingly rare in the wild but more common in the pet trade.<\/p>\n
Of the 24,000 rattlesnakes he has relocated in more than 20 years, Hughes has come across a snake like this in the wild only twice.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d never expect to see something like this in my life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Rattlesnake Solutions will continue to research this discovery to determine the best future for this rare snake, but looking at the snake closely, Hughes made another discovery: the snake is pregnant.<\/p>\n
If you spot a rattlesnake, experts say don\u2019t try to catch or kill it; just keep your distance, watch where it goes and call a professional for help.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GOLD CANYON, Ariz. (KNXV\/CNN) – A retired Phoenix police officer traded catching criminals for catching rattlesnakes, but his…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":913060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,369112,1589,11311,369111,15087,27891,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,837],"class_list":["post-913059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-phoenix","tag-america","tag-arizona","tag-az","tag-gold-canyon","tag-phoenix","tag-phoenix-police-department","tag-rare-snake","tag-rattlesnake","tag-snake","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-wildlife"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116864526883929575","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/913060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}