Signs like this are common in the Southwest but shocking to an East Coast suburbanite! And rattlesnakes tend not to inhabit the places where the signs are. You stumble on them unexpectedly. Thank goodness for the warning rattle.
Derek, the laptop, is still in rehab. Posts will be a bit hit and miss for a week or so. He has the equivalent of a little head cold, nothing serious, just a little run down.
The warmer weather brings them out… It gets scary when you are hiking and hear that sound!!!! We found a beauty…a diamond back (dead)!!!! We had a friend skin it, mount it and then frame it. It has 10 rattles… and looks great in our office!! Great post! And they are frightened of you…but… I am frightened just as well!
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What a cool souvenir! But like you, I wouldn’t trust them to run, slither?, away!
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FAR AWAY HA HA HA
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😉
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I am so grateful I have yet to encounter a snake while hiking. How LNG do you think that lucky streak will last?
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Until the next time you come to Vegas in the hot weather! lol!
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Bite your tongue!
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I only meant for you to see one. Or hear one. At a distance. A very great distance. Or maybe not at all. Sorry. Feel bad now.
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Carol, I must’ve encountered some, at some point. I’m just so grateful I am oblivious to those events. No way I’ve spent that much time in the desert and not, right?…
Ignorance is bliss.
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As I mentioned earlier, I’ve only heard and seen one once. It was quite exciting and I probably got a bit too stupidly close to him to take his portrait. We are told (believe this if you will) that they are more frightened of us than we are of them so unless you step on one, you should be ok!
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I would love to meet a rattler… something that at least warns you when you get to near, not like our puff adders that warn you by biting you on the ankle…
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They’re about to come out here to greet the summer warmth. I’ll keep my ears peeled for you. I’d like to take a video with sound but I’d be backing away as the camera rolled!
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Rattle snakes? No ta; I’ll stick with pythons 🙂
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Hmmm . . . . squeezed and suffocated and swallowed whole or die of a poisonous snake bite? The jury might be out on that one!
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OK, I’ll rephrase that. I’ll stick with MY pythons.
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Your pythons? Am I missing something? Do you keep them in an aquarium in the sitting room? Is that a nickname for your children? Have I got so far behind in my reading that you’ve been to Florida again?
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You read that right – my pythons. Four of them, in a tank. 😀
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Why?
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They are PF’s babies. He’s a biologist, and he studied snakes for years and got attached to them.
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A sensible answer. I’m surprised at you. 😆
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I could have said I’d bought them to make myself some underwear, but 1) they’re not big enough and 2) I’d end up being hounded down by animal rights activists for a stupid joke. 😀
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That’s what I have come to expect from you!
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When we lived in Queensland we found a snake in our house one day which luckily took itself off while we were still having hysterics. We didn’t think much about it until we saw a wildlife display where we found the snake was a taipan, one of the deadliest snakes in the world which is usually very, very aggressive – it will attack without provocation. Then we found out our area was rife with taipans and we REALLY had hyper-hysterics!
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Well I’m pleased to know that you are in Turkey – alive and well!
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Yikes. That would get my attention.
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Not as much as actually hearing the rattle! 😯
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No kidding.
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Glad to hear that Derek is going to make a full recovery.
Hiking last year on the Bruce Trail took us through a section of the province where there is the only species of poisonous snake in Ontario. I was sooooo paranoid. I don’t even like worms. The last thing I wanted to encounter was a rattlesnake. It didn’t help when the news reports kept saying it was a record year for snake bites. Fortunately our only encounters were with the non poisonous variety … even if those encounters were no less traumatic 🙂
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Made me laugh! Worms! We are blessed in AZ with the smallest and deadliest scorpions. If that isn’t bad enough, they are very pale, almost clear!
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Ewwwwww. Maybe all this snow isn’t so bad after all …
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It kills off most of those nasty little suckers!
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Many years ago, I was at a resort in California near Palm Springs, and four of us were playing golf — all of us Canadians. One guy lost his golf ball, and started flailing away with his golf club in a mound of grass, before another friend hollered at him to get out of there because that’s exactly where rattlesnakes would be. We never saw one, and frankly, that’s about as close as I would want to get!
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We “stumbled” on one at an Arboretum near here. We were on a group tour. Everyone backed up except doofus here with her camera! I wanted to post that picture as well but am a bit hamstrung without my laptop this week.
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Oh the Wonders of the Great Outdoors and the things that try to attack you!!! Happy Hump Day:)
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Happy Hump Day to you! I finally know what that is!!
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