Another post about a happening on a ferret vacation.
Tromping through the sagebrush, I was aware one could be there. In fact, the previous day I had sworn to have heard one give a warning shake in my general direction. Though this claim was dismissed by my fellow campers due to my lack of a sighting of the source of the sound. I hadn’t really given myself much of a chance of confirming the source of the rattle, having kicked my jet engines into gear, following my heart leaping into my throat, and rocketed myself down the hill back to camp.
Tired from the hike and the altitude, we took a break. I sat down under an aspen, desperate for shade in the canyon. Then came the pronouncement: the dingo had located a rattler. I made my way over to the source of the excitement. And there it was, coiled in a ball under a sagebrush, watchfully lurking.
Photo by Abbey Paulson
This was the first rattlesnake I had ever had the chance to stare down, outside of an incredibly controlled aquarium-esq environment. It glared right back at me, pleased with its position of power. Knowing we were all fearful of it’s venom, there, five hours from civilization and who knows how many more from a doctor.
Back at the campsite that evening, I pulled out my colleague’s guide to reptiles and amphibians. Looking at the rattlesnake distribution maps, it was likely this had been a Western Rattlesnake, though it’s color seemed slightly off from the basic description. Reading all the way through the text on the Western Rattlesnake, I eventually came to the conclusion this snake is pretty free-wheeling with it’s color and markings. Brown, yellow, green, grey, pink and all the shades and combinations of these; sometimes with markings, sometimes without.
Rattlesnakes as a species can be found basically anywhere in Western North America. Especially impressive is the altitude range they have been spotted in habiting – sea level to 12,000 ft. I can only imagine the terror of bounding down the beach in a wetsuit, longboard balanced overhead, and cross the path of a rattler. Along these lines, the Western Rattlesnake habitat list was also disconcerting: grassland, semi-desert shrubland, mountain shrubland, montane woodland, sandhills and areas between land and stream.
Rattlesnakes do not necessarily rattle before striking. Rattlesnakes have control over how much venom they decide to ‘dose’ the victim with. Rattlesnakes can strike and inject venom after they are dead (even if the head is separated from the body!) through a reflex.
As terrifying as all of this was to a camping ferret, it could have been worse. The snake about down could have been more aggressive (Western Diamondback) or more deadly (Inland Tiapan) or more aggressive, deadly and giant (Black Mamba).
