What is your Rattler story?

[Gnu Bee Flyer]

Rattlesnakes and I seem to have made a kind of uneasy truce over the years. My first encounter was when I was 10 or 11 years old. My friends dad Mr Vernon had taken us fishing to Conkle lake. There were 4 of us kids and although we were not supposed to, we went hunting garter snakes. There were black ones, brown ones and red yellow and black ones. I Caught 20 or so and hid them in a lunch kit taken along for just that purpose. The others did likewise. Returning home we all gathered in my back yard where I had a snake pit. It was an old deep freezer with the lid removed and covered with wire screen.
We dumped all our snakes into the pit, there were about 75 of them. You could sell them at school to other kids for about 50cents each. Most kids wanted the really small ones. As we were looking at our new acquisitions Carson yelled Hey there?s a rattler in there. Sure enough there was a tiny button rattler about 4 inches or so long. It looked very much like the dull brown garter snakes we were catching. We carefully checked and it turned out we actually had 2 of them . We will never know which one of us had grabbed those 2 tiny snakes. Whew!
Years later when I was about 25 I had taken my 2 kids to the Okanagan game farm. Ed Lacy the operator of the farm was standing in the rattler pit giving a rattlesnake demonstration to a crowd of about 20 people who were all standing next to the 3 foot high concrete wall of the pit. I called Hi to Ed as I passed by on the way to show the kids the newborn grizzly cubs. I noticed a particularly large rattler crossing the dirt road in front of me. I told the kids to stay put as I went and captured the snake. It was only 300 feet or so back to the snake pit so I took it back to give it to Ed. He was in the middle of his presentation, so I just stood behind the group of tourists awaiting the end of his talk. When He finished I spoke up.
"Hey Ed do you want this big one? I caught it just over there on the road. " People turned and saw me standing right behind them with this 4 foot long live rattler in my hands. There were a few screams and every single one of them ran for the safety of their cars. I looked at Ed who was laughing up a storm. It had not occurred to me that not everyone is as comfortable around snakes as Ed and I were. I said geeze Ed sorry about that. He replied , no no don't be. That was the funniest thing I have seen in a long time.

At the 2007 Central Washington Fish in I spotted a rattler early in the morning sunning itself on a patch of open ground. I told some fellows I met on the trail where it was and to avoid it. They wanted to kill it but I dissuaded them with the information that killing rattlers is illegal. It is the law in BC where I'm from , I don't know if it is In Washington state but what the heck killing it served no purpose at all so I ad-libbed a bit. ( lied )
The very next day at Stan Coffin lake Cary (line mender) and I were walking the shoreline casting for bluegills. We ventured down a narrow trail to where there was a likely looking spot for but it was wide enough for one caster, I hung 40 feet or so behind Cary to let him cast. After a couple of minutes I caught a tiny movement only 6 inches from my left foot. There in the grass was a small coiled rattler about a foot and a half long. Now I know that no one would believe me that a coiled rattler that close wouldn?t strike so I stayed put and called Cary over to witness it. He came over at my call, I pointed out the snake beside my shoe.
( we were going out in the boat so I had street shoes on instead of boots )
He said damm! Roger that?s a coiled rattler. Yep it is I said but I figure that it's coiled to get warm not to harm me. It's head was pointing away from me. If it hasn't struck by now it isn't going to. As we watched it, I spotted another darker slightly larger one about 3 feet from the both of us. That was enough snakes in the tall grass to get us to cautiously move off. We went up to ready the boat and as we did two of the State park people drove up in the honey wagon, they were the toilet cleaning crew. The younger of the two began cleaning the area of trash around and near the washrooms. The older fellow obviously the boss, stayed in the truck. So we told both of them about the snakes as they were cleaning in that general area. It turned out that the young guy was summer help earning his way thru college. He was very eager to see a rattler. So Cary and I took him back to the spot. I was pointing out the one rattler when a much bigger one than the first two came flying out of the grass right past all three of us about a foot away from all of us. He was just trying to get away and heading for parts unknown as fast as he could go. Cary and I laughed our heads off as the College kid let out a yell and ran for his life back to the truck. The older guy said to him, well I warned you there were snakes.
An interesting thing about the first snake was that it was a real reddish copper color. Neither of us had ever seen that variety before. I subsequently learned was a Red Desert rattler. Not rare but not common either. The other two were ordinary darker coloured diamondback snakes.
Generally speaking Diamondback rattlesnakes are the biggest coward in the bush. Stories in magazines of rattlers chasing and attacking people are pure hogwash.
They will always retreat if given the opportunity. If You step on one or corner it that?s where the danger lies. It will defend itself if it has to. It is a natural reaction of most people to kill any snake they come across which is a shame because they do a lot of good keeping down the rodent populations. The biggest killer of snakes is the automobile.