Meet the Las Vegas Pastor With a Side Hustle Catching Rattlesnakes

Tim Agnello is a full time pastor with an unusual pastime.

At no cost, Agnello, who preaches at the Mosaic Church in Henderson, Nevada, makes himself available to anyone in the Las Vegas Valley who needs help relocating rattlesnakes.

"I see this as part of my ministry, in that I get to serve people. I get to help people," Agnello told Newsweek. "My faith drives me to be helpful and my hobby is a great conversation piece with new church folks. All the church people know that I love snakes and so I'll put it in sermons, and I'll make jokes about it."

Agnello has been interested in snakes for as long as he can remember. "I grew up the youngest of four and my sister and brother above me had snakes because my brother was allergic to animal hair," he said. "I grew up with snakes, I've never not been around snakes, and I was catching them by the time I was three. It was just part of life."

But it was not until May 10, 1975 that he caught his first rattlesnake. "I'll never forget it," he said. "I was 11 and a half years old and we were flipping pieces of wood in the hills near our house. We were looking for stuff underneath. And we flipped one piece of wood and there was a rattlesnake sitting right there.

"My friend started crying and he's freaking out and he's running all over the place and I'm just like 'wow this is amazing I've never seen one before.'"

Nevada is home to six different species of rattlesnakes which can be found throughout a range of habitats. "Out in the sandy deserts, you've got Sidewinders [but] you go down by the lake in the rocks and you've got speckled rattlesnakes," Agnello said. "In between, you've got Mojave rattlesnakes, which are the most toxic snakes in the whole country."

Although they possess this potent venom, bites from rattlesnakes are extremely rare, and Agnello hopes that by educating people about snakes, he can share some of his passion for these creatures and dispel some of the fear.

"Most people are fascinated [by snakes] and they kind of want to watch from a distance, like a horror movie—they want to see but they also don't want to see it," he said. "It's a love-hate relationship. Then when you see someone handling something and there's that interaction, it takes the fear away and it's all of a sudden not as scary."

Agnello fits his snake catching around his role as a pastor, and tries to integrate his two passions to help his community. "As a pastor, my schedule is flexible," he said. "When you're in ministry it's a lifestyle because most of my work is interacting with people. I want to slide into other people's schedules to be helpful to them and be available to them.

"Being helpful to others is a passion of mine. When I was younger, I pursued everything about me, me, me. But I was always empty. But when I gave my life away to others, there's a sense of accomplishment. When we allow God's love to go through us and we're giving it away to others, we are constantly replenished. I love sharing that with people.

"God has given us this great adventure called life and doing it with him and the wonderful thing he has created is better than doing it alone."

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