Unwelcome Visitor
I guess it’s getting to be that time of year again…rattlesnake season. Yikes. Josh and I had been out all day again, weeding along our fence by the road, and planting a couple of bougenvillias. We weren’t even thinking to be careful among the 3′ tall weeds and boulders, but now we’ve had a wakeup call. Not 15 minutes after we’d moved into the backyard to plant a couple more things, we heard a big commotion outside of our gate. We walked to the front and saw a fire truck parked at the end of our driveway, and a bunch of our neighboors gathered around. Apparently one of our neighbors who lives up the hill was driving down our road and saw a huge rattlesnake heading down the road towards our house, and the area Josh and I had just been weeding in. She and another neighbor corralled the snake into a garbage can, and she called for help and the fire department came and chopped his head off. We heard that when they lifted the lid of the garbage can the snake was standing straight up and put its head out of the can. That’s a long rattlesnake! I do wish that a wildlife control place could have come and relocated this thing into the wild somewhere, though. It is pretty sad it had to lose its life just because it was in the wrong place, but really, I am relieved that we don’t have to worry about this particular one ever again. So I am grateful to the thoughtfulness of our neighbor. We were all surprised that it was there; we’d never seen a rattlesnake at our house in the three and a half years we’ve lived here. Our neighbors had never seen one at their houses either.
This thing was BIG. More than 4′ long and pretty big around. These Western Diamond-Backed Rattlesnakes are one of the deadliest snakes in the world, so you don’t want to mess around with them.
I googled this snake and here’s something I found:
- western diamond-backed rattlesnake
One of our neighbors had her camera available and took some pictures after the firemen…did their thing. It’s sad to see. 🙁 But it would be unthinkable to get bitten by one of these guys. If you don’t get immediate medical attention your chances of surviving are slim to none. These particular rattlers are aggressive and stubborn, and they won’t run away like most snakes if they see you; they will attack. And they’d be more likely to see you before you saw them.
Here are some of the photos our neighbor Rachel took:
Rachel’s kids were fascinated, and after a warning from their mom and us various other neighbors to never ever approach one of these with its head still attached, they went up to it and touched it and shook its rattles. I also ran my hand along it, curious what it felt like. Josh touched it too. It’s not like we’ll ever have any other opportunity to pet a rattlesnake. Or will ever WANT to for that matter. I was just curious. I’d held snakes before, (and I don’t particularly like snakes) but only pythons and smaller snakes. Those are sleek and smooth and sort of squishy but hard feeling. This snake was very hard and rough feeling, yet curiously smooth at the same time. The scales are much spinier too. I felt its muscles, too; the poor thing was still moving around and writhing quite a bit. That was…disturbing, to say the least. This snake was actually a pretty color. Most diamondbacks I’ve seen are the run-of-the-mill grey, black, white, and tan variety, but this guy was a beautiful yellowish rosy beige.
Sorry for the morbid post. 🙁
On another note, we’re still pretty shaken up (literally and figuratively) by all these earthquakes. Living in Southern California all my life, I’m no stranger to earthquakes. But to have a BIG one, and then to have multiple ones per day for five days in a row…it’s getting pretty old. We had another one this morning that was quite big, a 5.4 I believe. It’s funny, because some quakes you barely react to; like you’ll just lift your head and go “whoa”, or “earthquake”, but you don’t do anything about it, and it’s barely a blip on your radar. But sometimes, for whatever reason (I mean it’s not like you can really tell in the first second or two if this will be “the big one”), some of these quakes really get your heart pounding and your flight-or-fight instincts on high alert. Most of these in the last few days are of the variety that don’t get your heart pounding, but it’s still been pretty intense anyway. I think all of our nerves are still jangling from the big one on Easter, and we don’t quite know what to expect. We’ve never had so many big ones for so many days in a row. I can’t even tell you how tense I was when I finally went to bed on Easter. That was a seriously earthquake-filled night. I don’t think we’ve ever had an earthquake on a holiday before, and what a coincidence that this one happened on Easter! In the Bible, Matthew 28:1,2 says “Now after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake…”
I sure hope the earth settles down finally. I would like a good night’s sleep again. And I mean, seriously, it would be nice to go to the bathroom and not worry “what will I do if a big earthquake comes while I’m sitting on the toilet?”. I hope to never find out!