Warning: Rattler Ahead

Visiting friends recently in a tiny town on the east side of the Cascades, Marjorie and I headed out for a post prandial stroll. We stepped out the front door a few steps into their driveway in the full darkness of a moonless, streetlight-less night, which caused us to stop and for Marjorie to get out her headlamp. As she was adjusting it to get a red beam, figuring we didn’t really need or want the full brightness, we both heard a tchuk-tchuk-tchuk sound. Both of us thought, we later discovered, that it was a sprinkler and that it was an odd sound out here in this somewhat wild habitat.

Marjorie continued to fiddle with her light when we heard the tchuk-tchuk-tchuk sound again. “Rattlesnake,” she said, as she turned on her red, then white, light, illuminating a coiled rattlesnake about 10 feet from us. He or she was a northern Pacific (aka western) rattlesnake, Crotalus oreganus oreganus. After taking a few photographs and admiring the snake, we continued our walk; the snake was gone by the time we returned.

Although we had talked about rattlesnakes a couple hours earlier—our friends told us that the snakes often came down the adjacent slope to the valley, most likely to hunt—I hadn’t thought to think that the sound I heard was natural. Being an urbanite and no longer a desert dweller, as I had been for nine years post college, I had simply gone with what I was used to, the sounds of people doing peoply stuff. Thirty years ago, I would not have thought sprinkler at all. I was living in southern Utah and the only rattle sound I associated with the desert, even in my somewhat urban existence of Moab, was rattlesnake, of which we had three species to encounter: midget-faded, Great Basin, and prairie. Sadly, I rarely saw them though was always aware of the potential and always excited when I did.

Clearly, and not surprisingly, my desert skills had faded, replaced by an urban awareness of sirens, sketchy behavior, cars, bikes, and bad language. But Marjorie is a desert gal, born and raised, so had her native instinct to know of what she heard….thankfully. Who knows what dire circumstances could have happened if we had blithely continued walking into the driveway without heeding the warning of the neighbor. The snake may or not have struck and even with a strike may or may not have injected venom, which in this species is potent mix of lethal neurotoxins, hemotoxins, and myotoxins, none of which would have been pleasant injected into my leg and sent around my interior.

One of the wonderful aspects of rattlesnakes is that they do warn you, not that they are going to strike but that you are invading their space, so you can avoid them and allow them to go about their business. More often than not though they actually don’t warn you and simply ignore you, which means that you, if you have been to a landscape inhabited by rattlesnakes, have passed by many rattlesnakes without realizing it. But when they rattle, there’s only one logical response: pay attention and move out of the serpent’s way.

Perhaps the same snake, the next night, slowly snaking up the hillside, not giving two hoots about us.

Unfortunately, people don’t always cotton to that warning, and some people are just unlucky. But one group, 20 to 35 year old males, especially ones who have been drinking, stand out for failing to fully recognize the potential danger. A study published in 1999 described five people—"Bro-dude, check out this snake I just killed!”—who were bitten by snakes they had killed, and in some cases decapitated; one of these swift thinkers even had had to have a finger amputated.

It seems that we should thank rattlesnakes for their behavior instead of denigrating them but people all too often fail to acknowledge the warnings given. Consider our modern political environment, certainly there are far, far too many politicians who amply warn us with their terrible statements and actions and yet people seem oblivious to these signs. In the natural world, people pretty quickly learn to avoid those who bear poison. Why can’t we do so with politicians, and their ilk? (That being written, I am always bothered when animals are used as a metaphor for human behavior, especially snakes; I tend to feel sorry for the animal because the human behavior is typically more suspect than what the animal does.)

The next night after dinner, we headed out to the driveway again with our light but no luck, no snake. Fortunately, some friends who had dinner with us spotted a rattlesnake down the road and alerted us. We went and saw the serpent, who moved ever so slowly through the grass, seemingly unperturbed by me taking photos. Our friends had also noticed a black widow spider just outside the front door, so we had the added pleasure of seeing another notorious and fine desert dweller. I do miss the desert!