rattlesnake

The next day Scott almost rode over a 5-foot rattlesnake. It was sunning on the shoulder and by the time he was close enough to recognize it as a snake, he was within ten feet. When Scott swerved, we followed suit, then pulled over to examine it.

Common sense would say to snap a few pictures, and use a zoom lens to do it, then take off with a good story and maybe an okay picture.

The thing is that common sense and 22-year-old males are frequently mutually exclusive.

It was Jerry who said, "Let's kill it so we can keep the rattle!" We all agreed that was a GREAT idea.

This, coming from the city slickers who are afraid of chickens. We didn't extend that thought to what we'd do AFTER we killed it, or how we'd cut the rattle off (I only had a tiny Swiss army knife, and they didn't even have that), or the blood and gore it would entail.

But, boy, that rattle sure would be cool!

So, how DO you kill an adult rattlesnake? Clearly, you just throw rocks at it.

About 150 rocks later it just lay there, coiled and rattling, not bothering to commit suicide out of fear, or even to retreat off the road.

We eventually realized that we weren't going to kill it. We weren't even going to hurt it, so we silently acknowledged defeat and started to climb back on our bikes.

Just before we started pedaling, a guy in a truck stopped on the opposite side of the road and yelled, “Don’t kill it! Don't kill it!”

I didn’t think about it until later, but I guess that’s just a thing West Texans do…. kill rattlesnakes on sight. Even so, I wondered HOW he thought we'd kill it, unless he suspected us of having a large handgun in our handlebar bag. This is Texas, and we ARE in our twenties, so in his mind maybe it's likely that's EXACTLY what would happen... we'd just start blasting away. Yee-Haw!! BAM!! BAM!!

His actions seemed practiced as he trotted to the bed of his camper and pulled out a long stick with a noose on the end. With a steady hand he looped the end around the snake’s head and picked it up as it hissed and rattled, then placed it into a metal container in the back of his truck.

As I watched, a number of questions popped into my head: This was the first person who had driven by in the past hour, and he had a snake-catching stick with him. Does EVERYONE in this area carry them around? Like a handgun in a handlebar bag? Or like a spare tire in case you have a flat? Does that mean that there are so many rattlesnakes that we need to be worrying about them sidling up to the side of our tent while we sleep, or when we go to the bathroom at night? I thought about getting a snake catcher to carry with us, but how would I carry it on my bike and, more importantly, what would I do with a snake if I caught one? Although, I suppose I could just wait for the next person to drive by. I’m sure they’d want it.

As he wrangled it into the container I counted the number of rattles. There were ten, so I thought it was about ten years old. Later, however, I learned that rattlesnakes sometimes shed their skin (thereby creating a new rattle) two to three times a year. Also, sometimes the end of the rattle breaks off, especially when it grows to more than ten rattles. These are the things you learn while traveling on a bicycle.

Jerry asked him what he was going to do with it and he told us about the Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup. Sweetwater is the name of a nearby town where “The World’s Largest Rattlesnake Roundup” is held. He left before we had a chance to ask him more, but later learned more about the Roundup. Some of the following information was from people we met, but most of it was from personal experience after I made it a point later in life to go check it out in person.

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