Tales of the Southwest: Conversation with a Rattlesnake

Note:  The Lady of the House and I are doing some in-town moving so the computer is getting packed up.  It may or may not be some time before the next blog entry......

            Actual factual photo taken with my cell phone camera of the young rattler 

I encountered on a lunchtime walk

            I was out for a lunch time walk the other day when I came across a young rattlesnake stretched out in the November sun by the side of the road.  It probably was just a foot long.  I took a picture of the youngster then went looking for a long stick.  I found one and used it to urge the critter off into the tall grass, didn’t want to see Kid Rattlesnake smooshed by a car.

            I think he was a bit chilled.  That young rattler didn’t act like the rattler I came up on in Lincoln County a while back.

            It was an early fall morning.  I was on the north side of the Capitan Mountains driving on back to Clovis.  I rounded a bend and there was this big ol’ rattlesnake stretched out on the blacktop, warming up for a big ol’ rattlesnake day.  It must’ve been 5 feet long.

            I pulled up alongside the rattler and rolled down my window.

            “Hey,” I said to the rattlesnake, “you better get off the road, somebody’s gonna come along and run over you.”

            The snake didn’t move.  There was nothing in its eyes to indicate it had understood what I said.  Maybe he didn’t understand English.

            I backed the car up and edged the front fender toward the snake.  It coiled up in the classic rattler pose with its neck arched and its rattlers buzzing.

            I leaned out the window.  “Hey, I’m just trying to keep you from getting killed.”

            The snake lunged.  I heard a soft, small thud against the car.

            “Aw man,” I said to the snake, “give up this aggression thing.”

            I drove past the coiled serpent and pulled over about 20 feet away from it.  I thought it was so cool, I hadn’t seen a rattlesnake in the wild before.  I got out of my car, grabbed my bag phone (that’s how long ago this was) and decided to call my friends and share my encounter.

            One of those I rang up that Sunday morning was my friend Kent, Bard of the Pecos.

            “Dude, you should see this, it’s a big old rattler all coiled up in the middle of the road and rattling, listen,” I held the phone toward the snake so Kent might hear the rattling.  It was loud.

            “Did you hear that?” I asked him.

            “You really are one crazy sumbitch, just turn your car around and run over it.”

            “It ain’t gonna hurt anyone.  I’m out in the middle of nowhere.”

            “The only good rattler is a dead rattler,” he said.

            Everyone else I called agreed with Kent about the snake and my mental state.  

I started tossing stones at the rattler hoping to scare it off the road. 

“C’mon dude, get off the road,” I said.

It rattled.

I was hoping no one would be coming along who might run over the snake or think I was a can short of a six-pack.

“Doesn’t anything bother you, dude?” I asked the snake.

It rattled.

            Then one of the stones landed close enough to the snake to bother it.  It straightened out and moseyed off the road to a bush where it coiled up again and resumed its rattling.

            Satisfied I’d lent a helping hand I hopped back in the car and resumed my trip home.

            Rattlesnakes, just like coyotes and prairie dogs, can get some folks into heated discussions.  Like that time I wrote an article where I waxed poetic about encountering a prairie dog town…I got an email from a woman over in Roosevelt County telling me I was a dumb city sumbitch and I didn’t know what I was talking about.  Prairie dogs cost ranchers money in cattle lost to broken legs from stepping in prairie dog holes.  I wrote her back asking her if she knew my buddy Kent, Bard of the Pecos, ‘cos he thought I was a dumb sumbitch too and she lived not far from him.  Turns out they were school chums.  After that the woman and I were just like old pals.

When it comes to western animals I figure to each their own.  If someone’s going to go out of their way to smoosh a critter on the road, shoot one, trap one and so on well there ain’t much I can do about that…that’s the way it goes.

            And then I know that sometimes its hard to avoid hitting an animal on the highway.

            But whenever I see a rattler in the road, I’ll swerve to avoid it.  And if I have time I might pull over and have a chat.  They’re fascinating conversationalists.