San Luis Valley, Colorado, a couple summers ago, on a mountain bike ride with my two dogs.
I couldn't see it, but there was no mistaking the sound. Finally I saw the rattlesnake just two steps off the mountain bike trail. He was moving a little. His rattles were up in the air. This rattler was huge. And he was pissed. My first concern was to get both of my dogs on the leash.
It's odd to have finally heard and seen a rattle after all these years in rattlesnake country. I was beginning to think that they were just a chimera. Prior to this week I had seen two rattlesnakes in eleven years of hiking and biking in rattlesnake country. Fortunately they are dormant in the winter, or as the Bard would put it, they lie there in "the borrowed likeness of shrunk death." In the summer, our early starts in the morning keep the rattler issue manageable. But today's rattlesnake was the third one this week. Apparently the west side of the San Luis Valley of Colorado is the rattler capital of the West.
A couple days ago I saw a semi-dormant rattlesnake on a dirt road, early one morning. I wondered if I could get, say, ten feet away and photograph him. Then a pickup came by and deliberately ran the snake over right in front of me, while I was setting up for the photo shoot. Now there was an opportunity to take some real closeups and write it up on the blog as a death-defying experience. But the photos were poor. It would have been naughty to trick my readers like that, but the Devil made me do it. I mean the serpent.
It's odd to have finally heard and seen a rattle after all these years in rattlesnake country. I was beginning to think that they were just a chimera. Prior to this week I had seen two rattlesnakes in eleven years of hiking and biking in rattlesnake country. Fortunately they are dormant in the winter, or as the Bard would put it, they lie there in "the borrowed likeness of shrunk death." In the summer, our early starts in the morning keep the rattler issue manageable. But today's rattlesnake was the third one this week. Apparently the west side of the San Luis Valley of Colorado is the rattler capital of the West.
A couple days ago I saw a semi-dormant rattlesnake on a dirt road, early one morning. I wondered if I could get, say, ten feet away and photograph him. Then a pickup came by and deliberately ran the snake over right in front of me, while I was setting up for the photo shoot. Now there was an opportunity to take some real closeups and write it up on the blog as a death-defying experience. But the photos were poor. It would have been naughty to trick my readers like that, but the Devil made me do it. I mean the serpent.
Comments
If you see any, I'd love to see photos of them.