Snake Stories: The Deadly Diamondback
77Real Life Encounters With Adrenalin
Many published articles swear up and down that rattlesnake venom usually won't kill you. Oh yeah? Talk to the fellow who was bitten in the neck near Spokane, Washington, some years ago.
Oh. Wait. You can't. He's dead.
The victim was in his fifties, camping near a lake, and never made it out of his sleeping bag. There were no witnesses to the strike itself, but the best guess is that the reptile snuggled up to him to get warm during the night...the man rolled over in his sleep and--oops.
That said, both animals and humans do on many occasions survive a dose of reattlesnake venom. For myself, I'd prefer not to test my resistance. As to my wife, with her tiny size (92 to 95 pounds) plus her allergies to every known form of venom...let's put it this way: A snake bite would kill her faster than an exploding airbag in the face.
Growing up on a ranch six miles west of Drummond, Montana, my childhood years garnered many a snake story. Here are a few of them, not including one in particular that would be a good topic for a bit of cowboy poetry:
At age five, one fine summer evening when Dad was not home, Mom and I became aware of a rattler crawling past the front step. Even at that age, I had learned caution. Not only did we live at the foot of Rattler Hill, just one ridge over from Rattler Gulch, but diamondbacks sometimes actually denned beneath our log house!
It took me no time at all to scramble up on the hood of our family station wagon. Mom called out for me to stay there, and I had no objection at all to listening to my mother on that one.
At age six, I had a good friend my own age, a first grade classmate named Sandra. One day in August, Sandy and I were playing on an old, broken up stretch of asphalt that had once been a state highway. Her parents rented a log cabin from my parents, and several adult men--including my father--were working on a barnyard fence nearby.
I was pulling my little red wagon, a real Radio Flyer. She was towing her tricycle. Sort of a Tarzan-Jane thing without the vines. But we did have a bit of jungle of sorts: A patch of tall weeds with broad leaves (I forget what they are called) had grown up through the crumbling asphalt. As small as we were, the plants were well over our heads. The patch covered about six feet from start to finish.
When I was almost through this mini-jungle, I heard a rattler buzz. Up to that point, I'd not actually heard that distinctive sound--but once heard, you and your adrenal glands never forget it. I had learned caution. WIth extreme care, I parted the weeds at face height with my left hand and peered out.
No more than a foot ahead of my foot, a gray rattler lay coiled just outside the weeds. It was about a three footer, and seeing it ready for business inspired me greatly.
I yelled, "RATTLER!!"and launched out, up and over the snake. To this day, I suspect that if we had been able to videotape the event, it would stand for centuries as one of the record athletic feats of all time. Not only did I clear the snake easily; I did it without remembering to let go of the wagon handle. Which meant the Radio Flyer came clattering out of the weeds right behind me, no doubt terrorizing the poor, innocent snake.
Sandy, sensibly, turned around and went back up toward the adults. For my part, I did not stop until I had set a sprint record for the 100 yard dash. Then it turned into a hollering contest between me and the men, who were about three football fields away from me at this point.
They ordered me to come on back up to the corral. I refused until someone came down to make sure that snake was gone. Finally, a young man named Pete walked down to the weed patch, carrying a two by four with which to clobber the critter if he found it. To no one's surprise but mine, the serpent had sped. Probably went back down a hole to its mate, telling stories about the horrible human kid with the red clatter-wagon.
It got worse from there. The grownups insisted I was imagining things, that I must have heard a cricket.
Really, now.
Some time later, Dad loaded me into his pickup, hauled me the 1/2 mile to our house, told me to stay there, and drove back to work. Mom was, as usual, in the kitchen. I repeated my story to her, using the edge of the kitchen table to mark off the estimated length of the rattler.
Being Mom, thankfully, she at least had no doubt that I had seen a snake at close range, not just heard a chirpy cricket.
Perhaps it was that sort of event that inspired my "snake art" in later years, particularly during 1980 and 1981 when I was taking an art class by correspondence.
My First Snake Art, Circa 1980
The Psychological Impact Was Considerable
As the years of my childhood and teen years rolled on by, I developed a mental problem concerning snakes. Not that I told anyone. It was my personal battle to fight, and I knew it. No one in the family was ever bitten, but that made little difference. I was aware that the Nelson family, who ranched over on the Rattler Gulch side, considered the danger real enough to move their kids to a house in town during the summers.
The psychological trauma manifested in several ways:
1. In the summers, in other words during "snake weather", I often had trouble going to sleep at night. As soon as I closed my eyes, I would see an entire sea of snakes, all coming to get me. I learned to counter this by picturing myself climbing a tree, which worked somewhat...until the snakes began climbing up after me.
2. I came to believe absolutely that if I met a rattler and did not kill it, I was dooming someone else--or even myself--to a fatal encounter at a future time.
3. Even in my thirties, in the City of Spokane, Washington, in the dead of winter, I would visualize rattlers under my feet any time I had to walk from my bed to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Also, there would be others coiled by my bed, ready to nail any stray hand or foot that might hang down over the side.
For many years, I could not sleep with even a toe or a finger outside the covers. To counter the underfoot Slytherins, I would picture myself wearing heavy cowboy boots, crushing their heads as I went.
Yup. I was a certifiable nutcase. Fortunately, those fixations did somehow pass. I can't say when it happened or how long it took, but today I have nothing against rattlesnakes. I will still kill any rattler I find within half a mile of my home, but nowadays I regret having to do it.
Special note to my readers: If you do not believe in reincarnation, you might want to stop here--or simply figure my subconscious healed me!
Two things I do know about, things that helped me see diamondbacks in a different light. One was a TV program, an old black and white documentary about the Amazon. Along the great river's bank, the film showed a huge rattler coiled and buzzing at an approaching crocodile. The croc calmly walked up and ate the snake; it didn't care in the least about being warned off.
Seeing that made me sick to my stomach. This I did not understand. Snakes (I thought) were my enemies. Why would I have such a reaction? It puzzled me for two years, by which time my previous curiosity about reincarnation had become (and is to this day) an absolute conviction. The answer, when it finally came, was stunningly obvious:
I had experienced the snake's death from the point of view of the snake.
This discovery surfaced when I met a man who, I firmly believe, had been a crocodile...and had turned me into lunch when I had been a rattlesnake! Deja vu nausea. The "croc man" and I came to a near-confrontation; it was a razor's edge situation and then some. I knew if he pushed things even one hair farther than he just had (toward my then-wife while we were all playing frisbee), then it would be necessary--necessary--to take him on. And I would lose.
One more event clinched it: A dream in which I was a mother rattlesnake who loved her babies where they had been born under a human's house. I went crawling out into the sunlight. A human was waiting for me and chopped off my head, releasing me to go on to the next life. Perhaps, then, I grew up around rattlers in this life simply because I had been one? Hmmmmm.....
Okay. 'Nuff esoteric stuff. Back to the snake stories. One that happened not to me but to a friend of mine went as follows:
This man grew up in Oklahoma many years back. One day, while he was out plowing a field, he looked across a fence to see his neighbor stop his tractor, pull a length of log chain off its carry rack, and begin swinging the chain at the ground repeatedly. My friend found this quite interesting.
Then, all of a sudden, it got MORE interesting: The neighbor turned around and began beating the ground right behind where he had just been standing. Such a mystery needed to be solved. Before long, the neighbor's tractor pulled to a stop so that he could talk over the fence to my friend. His face was still drained of all color.
He explained that he'd been plowing along when he saw the Grandaddy Of All Rattlesnakes, so he had stopped the tractor, grabbed the chain and gone to work. Then something made him turn around, and right behind him was the GrandMommy of all rattlesnakes. The experience had given him a new level of appreciation for adrenaline.
A Striking Example Of Snake Art (Pun Intended)
Racers, Bullsnakes, And Other Confusion
Rattlesnakes were bad enough, but other snakes definitely did add to the mix. Once, at about age nine, I was sitting beside a riverbank, waiting for Dad to finish mowing hay across the river. When he crossed back over to my side, he would give me a ride to the house. In the meantime, I sat quietly, watching the water flowing by.
Until I heard it. Snake in the grass. Beside me.
It had to be some sort of water snake, headed for the river as it was. From the corner of my eye (not daring to actually turn my head) I could see a small section of the beastie as it glided past. And glided. And slithered. And kept going. Knowing what I know now, the black serpent with the yellow stripe--whatever species it was--could not have been more than three or four feet long.
My perception made it more like thirty or forty feet.
Racers are a whole 'nother breed of cat. Uh, snake. They call them racers because they ARE fast--and sometimes aggressive. When my sister, Donna, was in her teens, a blue racer wrapped itself around her boot. The result was probably a new land speed record for a Screaming Sister.
Bullsnakes can look huge...and they EAT rattlers. We tried not to kill them, since we logically knew they were on our side. But snake-phobic humans can't always differentiate that easily when terror is on the rise. I don't believe we ever made a mistake about that...but we certainly could have.
There was the time in Wenatchee, Washington, when I saw a two-foot copperhead crawling across our driveway and made the mistake of calling across the yard fence to tell my wife and stepson. They came to look, but then wanted to bother the poor thing. Rather than get into a mouthfight with my soon-to-be-6th-ex-wife, I SAT on the concrete in my jeans and motorcycle chaps (I'd just come in from a ride).
Looking for cover, the slender reptile crawled beneath my upraised knees. I now had a venomous Slytherin in a really good position to bite me through my pants. Trust me, I did NOT move! Eventually, my stepson lost interest, and I was able (with a bit of wheedling) to get my future ex to confirm that the little viper had gone out from under me and taken cover in the rocks bordering the driveway.
In the Mojave desert of California, during the summer of 1967, I spent two weeks at an Army summer camp as part of my reserve commitment following my release from active duty. In that environment, both scorpions and desert sidewinders (rattlesnakes) are plentiful. One day we moved camp as part of a military exercise, arriving at our new location just at dangerous dusk.
We Montana men, of which there were many, set up our cots and went to bed ASAP. Rattlers are risky enough in daylight; moving around unnecessarily after dark is just plain idiotic.
What that makes the California guys is beyond me. A bunch of them were running around the low ridges surrounding the camps...looking for "bellworms", as they called the rattlers.
Yes, my attitude toward snakes has evolved remarkably. That does not mean I see them as toys or pets or even entertaining bellworms. Or that I ever will.
Thanks for reading,
Ghost32
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Comments
Hi, Royzone--
Thanks for the comment. You will never have any doubt from me about your stories being real. When I finish posting this comment, I'm going to hop over to your profile and leave you some fan mail encouraging you to turn this into a Hub of your own. Then, if your Hub is too close to this Comment, I'll be perfectly happy to deny/delete your comment but LINK to your snake Hub.
A follow-up on Royzone's comment: It's fascinating to see the connections we make with each other. I was raised in Montana but did rodeo at both Penticton and Kamloops, B.C. As for Winthrop, Washington, I've attended the Winthrop Rhythm And Blues Festival (a cousin of mine being one of the original founders of that event). Small planet we have here, eh?
Just thought I would let you know that a buddy of mine and I are going to try and find a Rattlesnake Den this May and hope to shoot some pictures of them. I really don't like the idea too much but I like to face my enemies and I want to try and put an end to my snake fears.
We plan on wearing jeans with long thick work socks and cowboy boots,,the real high ones,,and carry some leather gloves as well. I don't think we need much protection above the boots anyway.
We plan on staying back as far as possible and use real long lenses to capture the critters but we have to find the den first.
I have been reading up on how to locate a den and finding old snake skins is a clue that you are real close to them. Also durring the early days in May when the temperature gets up to around 60--65f most of the babies leave the den for the first time and go straight for water. The mothers don't go too far from the dens untill the babies are about a month old. The mothers are the biggest of all of them having a large whoom and can give birth to about 15 per year.
Should be interesting to say the least and hope we can get some good pictures. We are taking pepper spray just in case we need something in the event that we get too close or surrounded. " Now that's a scary though Eh "
Hey Royzone--very interesting. I've done a few things to face my fears over the years, but deliberately seeking a rattlesnake den is definitely NOT one of those things. I do admit to being really curious about the pepper spray. Have heard that might discourage a bear; is it reportedly useful against snakes as well? And yes, getting surrounded WOULD be scary indeed.
Along that line, one of our neighbor friends on "the mountain" in Montana (see my Hub titled "Shovel Man: How to--") was hiking around his 20 acres one day when he came upon a coiled rattler. Whacked at it with his walking stick and THEN realized he was facing not ONE but THREE of the critters. Needed to change his shorts after that.
Now, learning to walk on stilts, THAT would be a cool defense...until about the time you stuck a stilt in a hole and fell off the stilts, that is. Do keep me posted on how your den-hunting and picture-taking go....
Hi Ghost32, I just discovered your fascinating snake hub. We have something in common--I've written one too, and would love to include a link to yours. Snake stories are always interesting. I little healthy fear of snakes is a good thing, I believe, but who can blame us for also being fascinated by the critters! Out here in Wickenburg Arizona we have California King Snakes that also eat rattlers. We have at least one or two of these territorial snakes on our property, and thankfully have never seen a rattlesnake on our acre-sized lot. We are still cautious about possible encounters, though.
Thumbs up. Looking forward to reading your other hubs and genuinely love your stoyytelling ability!
Hi, Wannabwestern--
Appreciate the comment. Good to hear from an Arizona Hubber. My wife spent many years on 12 acres near Sierra Vista, Arizona, and has had a great deal of experience with both rattlers and California King Snakes (not to mention javelinas--her Great Danes would occasionally bring her the HEAD of one of THOSE as a (yuch!) "trophy for Mama"!
Continued caution on your lot (despite not yet having seen a rattler in residence) is a VERY good idea. A little extra care for fifty years would be far better than a dose of venom in one moment of la-de-da carelessness; that's for sure. And, please DO feel free to link to our Hub. (I'd link back to yours as well, except right now I'm driving water truck in the gasfields 60 to 70 hours per week, and unspoken for time is HARD to come by!)
Ghost... Great hub here man. I share your love of snakes, and this was really cool. If you are interested, I have some snake hubs as well. I am a fan!
Hey, Rodney--
Thanks for the Comment! If my Hub came across as me having a "love of snakes", then good for me--because my life started out with an absolute terror of them, graduated to a controlled-response admission that they were part of Life, too, and finally, now, to fully Respecting them...but believe me, a Rattler buzzing under my feet would still "Adrenaline me" through the roof!
There are all sorts of stories about snakes here in Africa. Some come across as real hug monsters that leave terror in their wake. There is this one snake in my local village that is reputed to throwing up some shiny object at night. This draws small animals who then fall easy prey to the snake. So many snake tales it makes me dizzy. Personally....stay out of my way and I out of yours has worked well thus far. But I have seen a fair share of snakes though, including one that whistles as it slithers along.
don't u just gotta love snake stories....terrible to live in fear of anything...well i never was as traumatized about snakes as u Ghost...Oz certainly has some venomous ones... but no rattles for warn u...the Taipan or Devil Snake as the black fellas call them is right up there with the most venomous on the planet...along with the King Brown (6ft+) or Eastern Brown...when we moved out here to the bush as homesteaders 25 years ago...there were alot of Browns around every summer....i think i killed & ate most of them:)...but even today my heart speeds up...used to be very terrified of them when i'd be catchin them to relocate miles away...they helped me 'work through fear'....that was death itself & u had to confont it...once i had hold of the head/neck i felt better...wasn't worried about all the rest...used to use a plastic house broom to pin them to the ground just behind the head....& slide my hand up slowly...oh so very carefully:) to replace broom....them i'd THROW them down inside a wheat bag AFTER i had all of the body in first...later i improved on this method by getting another hold on the snakes neck THROUGH the bag.... BEFORE i let go of the first hold...this way i could close the top of the bag BEFORE the snake was released....but then as i got older & slower i thought Grand Dads double barrel shotie was a wiser option....now if i find any in the dog yard i deal with them...consider them a big threat to dogs & kids....fortunately see very few these days....got a dog who has a special 'repile' bark that helps...his Father was really good at it & was fightened of them & would stay away & just tell me there was one there....my dogs are my kids & the last time there was a black snake in the yard i yelled out BIG BANG (means death)...& they all ran with me to the house & couldn't get inside quick enough:)...well trained....to save a dog at vet from snake bite costs a small fortune here....however they were one of the staple foods for black fellas here...& i can tell ya they sure taste good...white chicken like flesh...i used to soak cleaned sections in soy sause in fridge overnite & then stir fry in olive oil, ginger & garlic....best 'chicken' u will ever taste (browns)...if u told someone that is what it is they would'nt know the difference...(except for the strange bones:)....a valuable food source when push comes to shove...considered a delicacy in asia.....motor vehicles far more deadly.....GB
Great post, Dave. Thanks. I'd read about the venomous snakes of Down Under and long ago decided the northern hemisphere was good enough for me.
How about a snake bites a cat and the cat dies in less than 5 minutes. well it was my cat and the snake was the brown snake. Deadly these creatures but i respect them and would stay away from them rather than hurt them.
Staying away from them is not always an option for us. While I marvel at people (like you) who are able to avoid them well enough to keep from hurting them, I doubt I'll ever make it to that magical state of consciousness. I regret killing, but I'd regret it far more if a cat or--God forbid--my wife were ever bitten. Especially if there might be a chance it was a bite by a viper I'd "let go" at some time in the past, or one of its offspring.
Bottom line: Regret or no regret, I kill them on sight. I'd rather have a guilty conscience than a dead wife.
I killed a snake when i was 8 years old. That was my first and last kill. The snake was near my house and it was a poisonous snake. Now i live in a different city where there are none poisonous snakes so I dont have to worry about them.
I believe you live in country side so you must be encountering snakes often. If I were you i would call a snake catcher and get rid of them if I found any. May be i can get some award or recognition from them that's always nice. In the end it's one's perspective.
Yes, we do live in the country (by choice). I've never had to deal with a deadly snake in a town or city, but we live in the Arizona desert. When I wrote the above Hub originally, we lived in the Montana mountains.
Around here, if you live in town, you might be able to call the police (or somebody) and get a snake removed. But in the country, we take care of such things ourselves. We do have neighbors who live about a mile away who seldom kill a rattler unless it is very close to their home, but then they do. Most of us "kill on sight".
There are no snake catchers in business where we live. Anybody we asked about that would think we were foolish city people who had no clue about living out here. There wouldn't be any award.
When Pam (my wife) lived with her former husband in this same county for many years, they did not kill them. Instead, her husband caught them and removed them...secretly dumping them alive in a neighbor's yard!! But that doesn't mean the reptiles didn't return.
It's interesting that your first and only kill was at age 8. From the way you stated it, I suspect you really, really had a hard time living with what you'd done. I would understand that--I have to control my own emotions, for sure. Anyway, I have stories from two years to either side of that. At age 6, I leaped over a three foot, coiled, buzzing gray rattler while towing my little red wagon! I'm pretty sure the snake was at least as scared as I was. Then at age 10, I made my kill, about a 30 inch diamondback that was right in front of our Montana ranch house. I sneaked past Mom with Dad's big .45 Long Colt revolver, thumbed the hammer back, and fired away. But that was far from my last kill.
As you say, in the end, it's one's perspective.
Hi again guys. Well I forgot about this site and just came across it today.
We actually did find a den on the east side of Osoyoos,B.C.,up in the rocky sides of Anarcist Mtn.,,,the big winding road toward Rock Creek. Anyway my friend I met two years ago and native to the OK Valley knew just where to take me.It was mid July / 08 and by the lake the temp.,was 109 f and dry as hell. Perfect day to find snakes.
We hiked for about 3 hours in the rocks and poked around for another couple before finding some skins. We took a short break and we were sitting on some broken rocks like 6 feet wide. My friend had told me that they don't usually start buzzing unless they are in danger or cornered. Well,,,belive me or not a female rattler came right up the rock I was sitting on and I didn't know it. My friend sitting across from me started winking at me and nodding me to stay still. When I realized what was happening I had a frightening attack and couldn't move or breath. That 6 foot snake came across the rock and slithered down the other side and without a sound left us alone. Both of us thought we were going to die before we could get back to town.We managed to calm down still wondering how many more snakes were nearby. I had my Pro Nikon camera with a 80-200mm AF Zoom on it ready for any shots I could get but we were so damn scared that we just started back. That was another problem as we thought we would see another one when we had to go back through an orchard to get back to town and we did. That damn orchard was the perfect place for rattlers on a hot afternoon and just waiting for a mouse or whatever to ambush. The whole orchard stared buzzing at the same time and we were done . Where to go as the buzzing was was everywhere so we started making noises to let them know where we were but as I found out later,they don't have ears. We came close to one and it coiled up at the bottum of a tree so we gave it some room while I attempted a few shots. Everytime my lens made a noise focusing the snake started moving real quick and shaking real fast so most of my pictures turned out blurred but I think it was me shaking as well.It struck my left boot so fast that I hardly had time to shoot a picture before it was coiled up[again. It stayed right there for a while and I did however get a few shots that made it all worth the time. That evening we went out for a few beers and we were telling some people about what we had done . Well nobody believed us and told us we were full of sh-t and one guy said he lived there all his life an never seen one. Well I went back to our motel room nearby and brought my laptop into the bar and showed everybody my pic's as they all bought us more beer than we could hold.
If you want to look at a few let me know.
Wow, Royzone. I'm impressed. Terror-bit at age 6, and now you go courting them by the gazillions? Also glad to hear you had on boots tough enough to stop a big rattler's fangs; lots of them won't.
Since you last visited, my wife and I've gone homesteading again, this time in Mojave green rattler country down near the Mexican border in Arizona (wrote an article on the Mojave green a while back, too).
Be more than interested in seeing your photos. If you click on "contact Ghost32" under my picture at the upper right, you can email me if you like. And if you'd like one or more of those photos added to this Hub, I'd be glad to expand the article to explain it and put at least one or two on here. Up to you, for sure.
Royzone says:
2 years ago
I was bit when I was 6 years old living in Penticton,B.C.,Canada. It was on a fall day after school playing near a rocky nearly empty creek with bushes growing in it. We were playing hide and seek so I hid in a clump of bushes . Yep ,,in few seconds I heard the buzz but didn't know what it was being a kid at the time. I was squatting down and right on top of the Western Rattler as I found out later in life . It looked to me like it was 20 feet long and 6 inches at the belly but really it was only about 3 feet long,,,3 feet too long for me so I jumped up and ran for my life. It struck me on the back of my ankle and then fell off and I kept on running. Good thing there was a hospital nearby and the teacher rushed me there in time. The other teachers killed the snake and had it stretched on a piece of wood and sent it around to the other schools as a reminder to keep out of the creekbeds in the late afternoons as the snakes came down for their afternoon drink of water.
That was just the begining of the terror that has lasted me a lifetime now. I couldn't sleep as a kid after the bite and allways thought there was a snake in my bed or under the bed and I constantly checked my bed inside and out at night before going to sleep. I couldn't go to movies because I couldn't see what was on the floor in a dark theater etc., etc. Then the dreams of what had happened and they still haunt me to this day and I am 60 years old now. Sometimes my wife will wake me up and shake me as I am kicking and yelling and trying to get away from a snake in our bed .
We live near Vancouver,B.C.,Canada for the past fifty years and there arn't any Rattlers around here but we go into the Okanogan areas now and then for a holiday and that is right smack dab in Rattlesnake country along highway 97 from California to Southern B.C.,Canada as far as Kamloops and Revelstoke,B.C. A few years ago I was on a short trip to Winthrop,Wa.,to do some pictures as I am a Pro Photographer and shoot a lot of wildlife in the Northwest.
I was standing near a river that was running past a dryed out field with lots of sage brush and rocky hills and I just had to shoot some pictures of it. I parked my jeep and got my gear setup and walked about 30 feet from the road and had my camera up to my eye and while I was focusing I noticed some dust moving in the bottom of the viewfinder. I had a 20mm lens on my Nikon Digital slr so everything looked further away than it was so I looked down and 3 feet from me was a coiled Western Rattle Snake ,,and a big one at that. Truthfully it must have been around 4 1/2 feet long and 5 inches in the belly. I went into shock I geuss and couldn't move a muscle. I was going to get bit again ,,so I thought. I was face to face with a killer and couldn't move to save my life. Then I yelled at it and it's head came up from the coil about 8 inches and looked around and up at me. I don't know why it did that but I took advantage of the moment to get the hell away from it. I leaned back and then pulled my foot back slowly. Then as I stood on my right foot to take the weight off my other foot the snake struck me on the feft foot but hit the toe of my shoe and it tried again but couldn't reach me again and I went back toward the jeep and the snake went the other way,,thank god! I got in my jeep and got the hell away from there and went to a nearby town called Pateros,Wa.,for a beer and told a few of the guys at the tavern. Only a few of them believed my story ( the older guys) and some of the people were from Seattle,Wa.,and wouldn't ever believe me ,,ever and one guy told me it was a Bull Snake.
As I was talking with these folks something just came to me out of the blue,,,and that was,,,that this snake didn't have a working tail and it was flat. It must have been run over by a car at the tail and couldn't make a sound. The only reason I knew it was there was because of the dust I saw in my camera!!!
Well , I do know the difference between the two and Bull Snakes don't coil up or strike their prey like a Rattlesnake. Anyway I got a room for the night and all the stuff in my head came back and I was terrified all night long and for years after.
Last year I went back to the same spot with my wife so I could show her where the snake was,,she stayed in the car while I made my way to the spot where I met the snake. As I was standing there it was about the same time of day,,late afternnoon,,,and I picked up a rock and threw it into the field. To my surprize about 5 to 10 rattlers started making their buzzing noise off and on letting me know that I wasn't welcome. A cold chill came over me and I quickly got the hell out of there never to return.
I have read quite a bit about these snakes lately and know now that they are not as dangerous to us as we are to them and they are now a protected species in B.C.,Canada. I read about the dens and where they are likely to be located. So, we all have to keep our distance from each other and all should be well unless we do something stupid like try to pick them up. Just a quick note ,,there was a den near a town in B.C.,called Grand Forks near the U.S.,Canadian Border that had as many as 400 Western Rattle Snakes in it and the government still won't allow anyone to build anything within 1 Killometer of the den.
Another time driving near a town in Washington State called Lomis, we were driving along a lake road on a spring day that was quite warm ,,about 65 F. and about 300 feet in front of our car a big bird,,maybe a Raven swooped down beside the road and picked up a small snake and carried it right ower our car in it's beak. We stopped in the town and the guy at a gas station told us that the big birds pick them up and fly high up and drop them on the highway to kill them and then they come down and pick them apart for a meal. And this now for the good part of the story. If you have a convertable with the top down they can drop them in your car and some people have driven off the road and been found with a snake bite on them but died from the crash !!??
FLYING SNAKES ARE REAL