"If it was a snake, it woulda bit ya."

Rattlesnakes get a bad rap. They are mostly quite chill. You really have to fuck with them, in most cases, to get bitten. They would rather just warn you away.

The rattle is in a class of evolutionary adaptations called aposematic defenses. These involve very obvious warnings that "I am not food. Don't even try it, punk." The unmistakable markings on black widow spiders and skunks are other familiar examples.

If rattlesnakes were mean and aggressive, they would lie in wait and strike opportunistically instead of giving you plenty of "would you please go away now" warning.

It was a snake, but it didn't bite me. In fact, it didn't even warn much until I had walked past it and the others saw it. I was, embarrassingly enough, dictating notes for a story into my phone and my leg passed within a foot of it.

This is a digitally zoomed phone video. I kept my distance. This little feller was probably 2 feet long stretched out.
#snake #rattlesnake #NoStepOnSnek

There's a nice 15 mile R/T bike ride on a low-traffic well-paved county road here that is also a good place to look for snakes at dusk.

Yesterday evening: a western diamondback rattlesnake (alas, turns out it was dying after being run over), a king snake and my first sidewinder rattlesnake!

I shooed the sidewinder off with a stick and picked up the king snake and carried it off the pavement. I dragged the diamondback off with a stick, but it was barely moving.

Alas, I have to be back in California soon, but we've got snakes there.

#snake #herpetology #RattleSnake #sidewinder #KingSnake #snek #NoStepOnSnek #SonoranDesert #Arizona