Tuesday, June 13, 2017

"Rain, you're a nutjob!"


I have lots of fun photos to share with you.  Bats, snakes, armadillos, and even the cactus I had for dinner yesterday.  Hopefully I'll be able to get a handle on my technology and share them with you.  In the mean time, enjoy this video of the rattle snake that we encountered last week.  I'm laughing so hard the camera is shaking because not all of my coworkers had the same kind of excitement I did when we spotted it crossing the gravel road in our project site.   I immediately put the truck in park and jumped from the drivers seat to take it's picture, but a few of my colleagues stayed safely in the truck and added good commentary to the video - "Rain, you're a nutjob!"  Ha!

As you can see, this was a very well behaved timber rattlesnake.  He made his body small and loudly announced his presence when I approached. He was clearly saying "don't step on me!" I kept my distance, but he made no moves to strike.  We were informed ahead of time that our project area is the home of rattle snakes, and diligently wore our snake gaters while trampling though the underbrush.  I would have been disappointed if we hadn't got to see at least one before we left.  It's been a long time since I saw a live one in the wild.     




3 comments:

Anonymous said...

He's beautiful!!

-Tamara

donny_walrus said...

I have questions: What would it have looked like if he had made any moves to strike? Does it happen quickly, or would you have time to negotiate with him? How much zoom does your camera have? It looks like you're about 5 feet away!

rain said...

I've been told that their striking distance is half their body length. I consider twice the body length to be plenty safe, so I stayed at least six feet away. My camera has a good zoom, so I really wasn't as close as it seems.

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