Tag Archives: rattlesnake

On the beauty of rattlesnakes

This is the year of the timber rattlesnake on the Southern Cumberland Plateau. I’ve seen and heard of more in the last five months than I have in the last twenty years combined. They’re sleeping in gardens, gliding across porches, crossing wooded trails, and swimming on asphalt. Most seem to be one or two years old, suggesting that we’re seeing the result of a baby-boom in 2013 or 2014. What might have caused such a successful hatch year is a mystery: perhaps a good mast year of acorns and hickory nuts swelled the rodent population, echoing a year later in the abdomens of fecund snake mothers? Another possibility is that the last two winters have been colder here than any within the last decade, pinching the rodent supply this year, making snakes take to the road where we then encounter them. Certainly 2014 was chipmunk-poor after the “Arctic Vortex” made several visits. I estimate an 80% drop in chipmunks the following spring.

Whatever the cause, these snakes inevitably run foul of humans. Many are dead on the roads; others are killed around habitations. I’ve picked up a few of these corpses and, before giving them a respectful return to the woodland community, I’ve taken great pleasure in examining what must surely be called their gorgeousness. Each individual has a different mottled pattern, but all grade in tone and texture from head to tail.

The nostril (higher) and pit organ (below) jut into the world. Inside the pit organ, a membrane hides a profusion of nerve endings and blood vessels. Nerve receptors tingle when temperature changes; blood carries away last second’s heat, letting the snake know moment-by-moment how its thermal environment is changing. The pit organ’s information runs directly to the same part of the brain that receives signals from the eyes. So “heat” is seen by rattlesnakes. The pits are extra eyes, functioning like pin-hole cameras. Oh, to be able to experience such a synesthetic world, if only for a few seconds.

And down the body we go, a cascade of forested scales:

And the tale ends with the longest rattle so far among the deceased:

For encounters with live snake cousins, I invite you to more sounds and sights.

Nemo me impune lacessit. Time to reclaim the Gadsden flag for all.

What does a rattlesnake sound like?

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This:

…before being released from the bucket in which I transported the snake from a friend’s house.

One cannot age a rattlesnake by simply counting the rattles (they gain a rattle with each molt, but usually molt more than once per year). However, this one was a youngster, maybe two years old? My post from June 2013 has a look at their teeth and some better scale shots of a larger individual.

May your crawlway be strewn with sunflecks and chipmunks, young snake.

Rattlesnake

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I’d been sitting on the dead ash log for a good thirty minutes before I noticed that I had company. The rattle caught my eye — what an odd piece of vegetation — then the whole snake popped into consciousness — whoa! The animal was curled catlike, its nose and tail resting on the body. It did not move one tiny little bit for the hour that I watched.

The eye is clouded which, I think, means that the snake is preparing to molt.

A close-up of the scales on the animal’s back (taken with a flash, hence the change in tone from the photos above):

The camouflage was incredible: the head was a perfect match for sun-bleached maple leaves, the dark patches were the color of wet litter. Hard to spot, even when you’re close:

I returned the next day found the snake coiled in exactly the same place, its body shifted slightly. Still very hard to see:

By coincidence, I received a frozen road-killed rattlesnake this week from some colleagues whose vehicle accidentally violated the revolutionary imperative: Don’t Tread on Me. This allows a closer look at the source of the phobias that have etched snakes into the deepest parts of our subconscious (religious allegories, anyone?).

In pulling open the mouth to get a photo, I managed to spike myself on the lower teeth. So when asked whether I’ve ever been bitten by a snake, I can now answer No, but I’ve bitten myself with a rattlesnake. Another entry in the Annals of Zoological Stupidity. As it happens, this week I’m reading David Quammen’s excellent new book, Spillover, which is full of tales of microbes leaping into humans through pin-prick wounds. So far, the end of my thumb shows no sign of incubating the next zoonotic pandemic.

If these images fang you with fear, let me add that I’ve spent thousands of hours in Shakerag Hollow and this is the only close encounter I’ve had with a rattlesnake.

The timber rattlesnake is declining across most of its range due to habitat changes, road mortality and direct persecution from people. In its former territory in the Northeast, sightings are very rare indeed. In the snakes’ place, plagues of tick-bearing small rodents tromp merrily through the woods, their enemy defeated.