[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[pct-l] Rattlesnakes in town



Years ago I lived on a ridge between the south and middle forks of the Yuba
River.  One day I was home with my toddler daughter.  There was no one else
around for miles.  The handful of other people who lived on our road had
gone to town.  So I go outside to find a large rattlesnake in the area where
my daughter played. Normally I had a live and let live attitude to rattlers,
but this one was in the wrong place at the wrong time as my neighbor down
the road had only last week had a near fatal snake bite.  When they decided
she wouldn't die they were sure she would lose her leg.  (She ended up
having surgery to her leg, but kept it.) So I reluctantly set about killing
the snake.  It was not easy, but finally I clobbered his head with a big
rock.  I first tried an axe, but kept missing.  It's hard when you don't
really want to kill it.  When it was dead I went inside to find that my
daughter had been stung by a wasp.  She had an allergic reaction.  So as I
was trying to protect her...

Beth in Portland OR

-----Original Message-----
From: pct-l-bounces@mailman.backcountry.net
[mailto:pct-l-bounces@mailman.backcountry.net]On Behalf Of Robert E. Riess
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 7:43 PM
To: PCT-L
Subject: [pct-l] Rattlesnakes in town

In 1985 I bought a house in the Tierrasanta area of SD.  The houses on my
street were built in 1971, and the area was completely settled except for a
few canyons, the nearest of which was about 500 meters away.  I was building
a little backyard play set for my kids, and my task at the time was to wheel
about 20 wheelbarrows full of sand from a dumptruck pile on my driveway,
alongside the garage, to the back yard. Our car was parked beside the load
of sand. I was just leaving with a load when my two kids, Jeannie (3 at the
time) and Bobby (2) came toddling out to get in the car with their mother.
We all departed from the driveway at the same time. It took maybe a minute
to push the wheelbarrow 40 meters, dump it and return. As I was approaching
the corner of the garage, I saw a little black object, about 2 inches long,
and an inch above the sidewalk protruding past the corner of the garage. I
stopped and looked closer to see it was the head of a snake.  I parked the
wheelbarrow and went around the other way so I could see it from a greater
distance as I approached.  Sure enought, there was a 16 inch baby rattler
right where I had first seen it. I captured the serpent with an inverted
diaper pail, and called Animal Control. They said don't kill it, they would
send somebody out.  This is where the story gets good.  The person who
arrived in the Animal Control van was an 18 year old female intern.
California blond, nice tan, short shorts, two pocket uniform shirt a size
too small, and absolutely nothing in her head.  A Pammy Anderson wannabe was
right there at my house, looking into my diaper pail, and asking if I had
something I could put the snake in. She didn't have anything. Well, I found
a pickle jar and dumped the snake in it. Pammy was very pleased. It was
about this time I realized that my two little kids had toddled right past
that spot not a minute before I saw the snake, which had to come from the
front yard, across the sidewalk and the driveway to get to where I saw it.
If my kids had seen that snake, they would have tried to play with it.

Ten years later, in a different house, Jeannie was helping her mother do
some laundry. She had several piles of clothes sorted by color and spread
out on a carpeted area in the garage. The clothes had been there since the
night before. She scooped up about half of one pile and turned to stuff them
in the washer.  Immediately she heard a buzzing, but she finished stuffing
the clothes and was reaching for the other half of the pile when she saw a 4
foot rattlesnake all coiled up and rattling like mad right in the middle of
the pile of clothes she was reaching for.  Apparently, it had crawled inside
the pile of clothes and Jeannie just missed actually picking it up. Anyway,
no bites, just a very scared little girl.  I wasn't home and I do not know
the disposition of the snake.

Any more snake stories out there?
_______________________________________________
pct-l mailing list
pct-l@mailman.backcountry.net
http://mailman.hack.net/mailman/listinfo/pct-l