In May, America was gripped by a viral video in which a helicopter airlifted a poisoned US Border Patrol agent into the middle of a small California town.

Colleagues carried the agent’s limp body from the chopper, put him on a stretcher and rushed him into a local hospital to be treated for a potentially deadly rattlesnake bite.

The twist: The federal agent was a dog.

Boo, a trained German shepherd K-9, was on duty with his handler in the rugged Otay Mountain wilderness when the rattler struck.

Boo survived. But his story is a stark reminder of a danger lurking in backyards and on hiking trails across California, threatening thousands of beloved family pets each year.

There is, however, an effective way to prevent these rattlesnake attacks: A specialized training course that teaches dogs to recognize the sight, sound and scent of a venomous rattlesnake and instinctively stay away.

It’s a life-saving service — one that Northern California entrepreneur Jake Molieri has built his small business, SnakeOut Inc., to provide.

One would think the state of California would celebrate a creative businessman who helps protect the public and their pets.

Instead, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has wrapped Molieri in a coil of regulations that is choking the life out of his enterprise.

According to the CDFW, Molieri is forbidden from charging money for his classes if he uses native rattlesnakes.

Why? Because charging a fee for an educational service that uses a native animal is, in the agency’s eyes, illegal “commercialization” of wildlife.

But what the state prohibits with a sweeping bureaucratic label is a vital public service born from classic American ingenuity.

Molieri is the kind of problem-solver on which our economy is built: He identified a serious need in his community and applied his expertise to meet it.

Using live native rattlesnakes in a safe, controlled environment, he can teach dogs the critical avoidance skills they need to survive a real-world encounter.

The classes enable dogs not only to flee from danger but also to alert their owners to the presence of a rattlesnake, protecting their human companions as well.

His course is so practical that law enforcement agencies have hired him to protect their K-9s.

Instead of acknowledging the training’s proven value, the state has offered Molieri two ways to comply with its restrictions.

First, the agency said, he could provide his classes for free.

But no small business can survive by giving away its services — and the bureaucrats at the CDFW certainly don’t work for nothing.

To expect a small business owner to do so isn’t just absurd; it delivers a lethal dose to his livelihood.

The second option is just as baffling: Molieri may charge for his classes if he uses non-native snakes, or albino rattlers.

This is like warning hikers of mountain lions with a picture of a tiger.

The entire point of Molieri’s training is to prepare dogs for the specific snakes they will actually encounter in Northern California.

Using a different species makes the training less effective — and working with albino snakes, which are prone to erratic behavior, adds unnecessary danger for dogs and trainers alike.

The government’s position is a textbook case of regulation detached from reality.

By the bureaucrats’ rules, the act of training a dog with a live snake becomes illegal the moment a fee is charged, yet it remains legal if done for free.

And it’s illegal if the snake is the native species your dog is most likely to encounter, but legal if it’s an exotic or albino one.

This isn’t about protecting wildlife. The state’s nonsensical exceptions prove that.

This is about the government’s arbitrary power to infringe on a citizen’s right to earn a living — in this case, by providing a life-saving service for man’s best friend.

It’s time for California to shed these preposterous regulations.

When rules serve no rational purpose, they don’t protect the public; they simply punish productive citizens and prevent them from providing valuable services.

That’s why Molieri, represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, is taking the CDFW to court this week.

At stake is his right to operate his business without irrational government interference.

He is fighting for his livelihood, for the safety of his clients’ beloved pets, and for a simple principle: The government should not be allowed to regulate a lawful and in-demand service out of existence.

In California, it seems the only thing more venomous than a rattlesnake is the bureaucracy. Let’s draw out the poison.

Brandon Beyer is a civil rights attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, where he focuses on economic opportunity and equality before the law.