Teenager moves protected adders from Finnish gardens

Fourteen-year-old Vilho Zeller relocates protected adders from people’s gardens to a secret refuge deep in the forest, Yle reports. He began offering the service in summer 2025 and has received around 20 assignments this summer.

“Shh, listen very quietly. Adders are just like balloons,” Vilho says as he sits beside the gravel road leading to his family home in Sipoo. He is wearing thick black leather gloves and holding a green-lidded plastic bucket.

A 30 to 40-centimetre adder hisses and swells between his fingers. Vilho explains that the snake draws a huge amount of air into its body to produce an intimidating hiss when it feels threatened.

The Zeller family home stands on a south-facing slope, offering what appears to be suitable nesting places for adders. The family says snakes have lived on the property for at least as long as its human residents.

The family moved to the outskirts of Sipoonkorpi National Park from Scotland about six years ago. Vilho was born in Scotland, and his mother, Peikko Pitkänen, says he has been interested in animals, especially reptiles, since he was very young.

His father, Wolfgang Zeller, is a doctor of geography and an Africa researcher. His work took the family to Namibia as well as Scotland, where Vilho became used to encountering a wide range of animals, from chameleons and lizards to snakes.

During the family’s most recent trip to Namibia, Vilho helped a family friend move a 1.5-metre Anchieta’s cobra from a car engine compartment. The snakes are highly venomous, but deaths from their bites are very rare because they typically stay away from people.

In Finland, the most recent recorded death caused by an adder bite was in 1998. Measured by deaths, the animals considered most dangerous to people in Finland are moose, horses, wasps, dogs and cattle.

Vilho’s mother suggested starting the adder relocation service. Most assignments take place in people’s gardens, where the snakes are moved to a refuge whose location is kept secret. Vilho says some people react to adders with such anger that he wants to keep the refuge hidden to protect the snakes.

Vilho usually travels to assignments by electric bicycle, with a plastic bucket and snake-catching tongs attached to it. He ordered professional snake tongs from the United States after watching documentaries by naturalist Austin Stevens with his father.

During the visit, the family receives a new assignment in Jokela. The journey is more than 40 kilometres, so Wolfgang drives Vilho there.

Sauli Salmikannas is waiting for them. His wife, Jaana, contacted Vilho through Facebook. Adders are often seen along a walking path beside a detached-house neighbourhood, and the Salmikannases’ dog has been bitten on the snout in their garden. A neighbour’s dog was bitten during a walk.

Sauli, who has lived in the neighbourhood for around 20 years, believes the snakes appeared after the municipality built a ditch along the edge of a field bordering the residential area. Frogs, lizards and rodents settled there after the ditch was built, followed by the adders.

Near a spruce beside the ditch, Vilho suddenly stops. His trained eye searches the dense brush for the zigzag pattern on an adder’s back. The darker the snake, the harder it is to see.

“Okay, I can see them. There are at least two,” he says.

Vilho approaches the brush almost silently. One adder emerges from the dry ditch bank, followed immediately by another. He then spots a third, which he expects will be difficult to catch. Soon the third snake is in a plastic box lined with hay, and a fourth follows shortly afterwards.

Sauli watches the operation in amazement. “I got goosebumps. You can see that he knows what he is doing. It was handled in a flash, and that’s it,” he says.

Vilho tells everyone to move away from the spruce and wait in the Salmikkanases’ garden in case more snakes appear. Wolfgang helps Vilho carry the box after the boy hurts his hand.