Reinach sat back and waited. Although a bite could potentially be fatal, she wasn't overly worried by the rattlesnake herself. And her dogs, two Chinese Shar-Peis, were safely locked inside the house. Reinach lives in Rio Verde Foothills, a community near Scottsdale, Arizona. Because this community is right by the desert, she had every expectation that snakes would appear on her land from time to time.

Reinach watched as the snake rescuer gently scooped the rattlesnake up, aided by a reassuringly long pair of snake tongs, before setting the animal inside a large container with a fitted lid. Holes in the barrel ensured the snake wouldn't run out of air. The rescuer took the snake into the desert, where there are plenty of dens for it to hide in and rodents for it to hunt. A place where there are no patio lights overhead, just thousands of stars.

Bryan Hughes was about five years old when he first held a snake in his hands. Members of a local herpetological society – a group that studies and looks after reptiles and amphibians – had brought a scarlet kingsnake to a nature centre near where he lived at the time, in Oregon. It was small but incredibly beautiful. Hughes marvelled at the reptile's rich red, creamy yellow and jet-black bands of colour. It was so shiny and clean, it almost looked wet.

"It just seemed so cool," he recalls. Searching for the words to explain the effect it had on him, he adds, "Holding that animal at that time felt like – it just hit something." After that, Hughes checked out every book about snakes from the library that he could find. Before long, he was looking for snakes in the wild. It felt like treasure hunting, he says.

After losing his marketing job following the 2008 financial crisis, he decided to try and make a living out of his fascination with snakes. Although he had no formal training, he had spent time volunteering for a herpetological association where he would rescue and relocate snakes that found their way into someone's garden or garage. There was so much demand that Hughes decided to launch a similar service as a business. He put together a logo, launched a website and, almost overnight, Rattlesnake Solutions was born.

Hughes says he and his colleagues always try to tell homeowners about the snake that they have been called in to capture. It is a key opportunity to inform a homeowner about the species they are dealing with, or to give advice on how to behave around venomous snakes. It's also a chance for an upsell. Rattlesnake Solutions offers a form of fencing that, when dug partially into the ground, can seal off the perimeter of a property from serpentine callers.

Part of the reason for the rise in snake encounters that Hughes and his colleagues have detected, he says, is because housing developers are repeatedly making "the same mistakes". They use large piles of rocks to protect tracts of land from eroding away during storms – but this makes a perfect hiding place for snakes. Also, developers often plant gardens full of leafy shrubs that require artificial watering. Snakes enjoy sheltering beneath those moist, cool plants.

"Rattlesnakes and people can coexist," says Emily Taylor, a snake specialist at Cal Poly in California who carries out native species snake relocations herself, on a voluntary basis. She describes Bryan Hughes as a friend but says she has no commercial connection to his company. She agrees that extensive residential home construction in desert areas is likely to promote encounters between people and snakes.

When they appear on TV or in movies, rattlesnakes are often sensationalised. They're depicted as menacing and vicious. Bryan Hughes, who has never got over his fascination with them, knows better. Rattlesnakes are wild animals whose lives are increasingly at risk from the expansion of human civilisation, and a society that doesn't really understand these reptiles.