A Close Encounter...

Yesterday afternoon I had a close encounter of the rattlesnake kind, in our yard.  This is a routine summer occurrence out here, but this was the first of this calendar year.

I had all four dogs on leashes, and was walking past our pines, when I heard a fuss, a hiss, and lots of bird squawking.  Just to my right, about six feet away, a pair of tiny canyon wrens was doing battle with a fairly large western diamondback rattlesnake.  The wrens almost certainly have a nest in the vicinity, and were being good bird parents, getting that snake out of the area.  The snake was quite unhappy at the unwanted attention it was getting, and was striking repeatedly at the wrens – but they were too quick for him to ever actually hit them.

I hustled the dogs back into the house, and got our snake stick (a roughly six foot long stick with a pair of tongs operated by a handle – lets me safely pick up snakes).  Debbie got an empty five gallon plastic tub.  When I grabbed that snake and picked it up, we got a good look at its size – about four feet long and roughly 3.5" in diameter in the middle.  A big 'un!

Into the tub he went, and I bungeed down the top.  I hauled him off to a remote area and released him, far from any homes or domestic animals.  Usually when I release rattlesnakes, they sort of slowly slink away.  This guy was still really upset, and he came straight for me, striking at the toe of my (heavy work) boot.  No damage done, but certainly got my heart rate up!

Crotalus ruber...

Crotalus ruber

Otherwise known as the red diamond rattlesnake, the most common species where we live (in the mountains of San Diego County).  I had a slightly unusual experience involving Crotalus ruber yesterday.  The photo at right is not mine, but it looks very much like the rattlesnakes we see most often here.

Rattlesnakes are quite common out here in the summertime.  They need fairly warm weather in order to be active (a consequence of being cold-blooded animals).  From roughly May through October it's not at all unusual for us to find rattlesnakes in our yard.  During the warmest months (July through September) they're most common.  We know they're not particularly dangerous to us, but they certainly are to the two cats we have that live in an outdoor cattery, and to our four dogs.  We keep our dogs vaccinated against the rattlesnake toxin, which mainly buys us time to get a dog (if bitten) to a veterinarian for treatment.  We've never had one of our dogs bitten.

Debbie and I have gotten pretty good at spotting rattlesnakes (they don't always make their signature noise!) and at removing them as a threat to our animals.  Our approaches, though, are completely different: Debbie uses a sharpened hoe to chop them into pieces; I capture them with a snake-stick and relocate them to Cleveland National Forest.  This reflects our different understandings of rattlesnakes: Debbie perceives them as evil incarnate, I see them as an important part of our ecosystem (but not in my yard!).

But back to yesterday...  I was working from home, and around 11 am I wandered out to our living room to watch the orioles feed for a minute.  I heard what sounded sort of like a continuous rattlesnake rattle, but it didn't sound quite right (had an odd sort of warbling going on), and it never stopped (normally the rattling is frequently broken by periods of silence).  From inside the living room, all I could tell about the location was that it was somewhere in the direction of our outdoor cattery.

I ran outside, grabbed the snake-stick from its hanger, and got a five-gallon covered pail.  Then I (carefully!) went out to the cattery.  The first thing I saw was Koa and Kama (the two outdoor kitties) standing right in the middle of their cattery, wide-eyed and carefully watching something to the south side.  They were fine.  I walked around to the south side of the cattery, looking for the rattlesnake – which was still making that odd-sounding rattle.  Usually the rattling lets me locate the snake immediately, but this time I was having trouble – the rattling didn't seem to come from a definite place.  Suddenly the sound changed: it sounded like what we usually hear, and it was coming from a definite location.  WTF?  I spotted the rattlesnake, curled up just outside the cattery.  But then the sound changed again.  By this time I was a little closer, and I figured out what was going on – there were two rattlesnakes there! 

One of them (the one that had been silent) was only about 4 feet away from me.  Their coloring makes them very hard to spot in our soil, and this one was no exception.  It was also curled up just outside the cattery, near the southeast corner.  I picked it up with the snake-stick, at which point it uncurled and I could see that it was a fairly large adult, just under 3 feet long.  After depositing him (not happy at all!) into the pail, I went back and got the other one.  It was bigger – close to 4 feet long – and much thicker.  Into the pail with it!  I closed the lid and tied it down well (wouldn't want it to come open in the truck!), then we took a trip together to a nearby stretch of Cleveland National Forest with no homes anywhere nearby.  There I let them go, and they slithered off in opposite directions, still rattling away like mad.

Two rattlesnakes in the same place at the same time.  That's a first for me...

Rattlesnake Season is Here...

A couple days ago, my neighbor Wayne told me that he'd seen a baby rattlesnake in his yard.  Yesterday, while mowing in our back yard, I saw three: one adult and two babies under a foot long (I transported them all to a lovely new home in Cleveland National Forest).  Then this morning I read this harrowing story of two parents trying to get care for their two-year old child who had been bitten by an adult rattler in Deerhorn Valley (just a couple miles south of Lawson Valley, where I live).  No word on the child's condition, other than that he or she is checked into Rady.

So it's that time of year, folks.  Watch your kids and your pets...

Good vs. Evil...

Reader Linda I. sent in this photo of a 3 foot long King snake that's just about finished with his lunch: a smaller rattlesnake. The only part of the rattlesnake that's still visible is the rattles, and I'm sure those didn't last long!

Many people have such a fear of rattlesnakes that they tend to brand all snakes as vermin. The reality is that we have more good snakes (King snakes and gopher snakes, especially) than bad snakes (if you subscribe to the notion that rattlesnakes are bad). Rattlesnakes are especially good at controlling the populations of small rodents, so they're not entirely evil themselves – but if your pets or small children have the run of your yard, you might find it hard to think of rattlesnakes as anything other than a mortal enemy...