WESTMINSTER, Colo. -- A Westminster man had a big surprise waiting for him when he helped a friend clear a home crawl space of snakes.

Jeff Stafford said he cleared 41 snakes from his friend's crawl space on Sunday by stunning them with a piece of firewood and placing them into garbage bags.

The snake odyssey began when a friend, repairing a leaking pipe, called him to say he saw snakes in his crawl space.

"He told me he saw a snake," said Stafford. "Grand total was 41."

Stafford told 7NEWS he went into the muddy crawl space and lifted up a piece of tarp he was kneeling on and saw a horde of writhing snakes. He said he started putting the small ones in the garbage bag and then ran into much larger ones.

Stafford believes they were bull snakes and the largest was four feet long. He said he felt like he was in the scene right out of the Indiana Jones movie where the main character is in a chamber filled with snakes.

"Very Indiana Jones like," said Stafford. "I wish I had a hat, but all I had was a piece of firewood."

Stafford said he spent last year traveling through Australia and saw many of the world’s deadliest snakes so he wasn't as concerned with the nest of snakes in his friend's crawl space.

"I'm a good friend to have around if you have snakes in your basement," Stafford said.

He and his friend let the snakes go in an open space area after taking photographs of them.

Bull snakes are non-venomous and can grow longer than 6 feet and are found throughout the central United States, including Colorado.

A woman who answered the phone at A All Animal Control said inspectors are being called to homes for snakes in basements and crawl spaces. The woman said these types of calls usually occur in late Spring, but because of the warm and dry conditions in Denver, snakes are coming out of hibernation early.