Tag Archives: Rattlesnakes

He’s So Mean He’d Bite His Own Self

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Rattlesnakes. That’s all you’ve got to say to give many people the Heebie Jeebies. And rightfully so. My old man, who I loving referred to as Dad, or Father if I’d done something really bad like wreck the family car or torn out the centerfold in his Playboy magazine, used to say about somebody he didn’t like much that “He’s so mean he’d bite his own self.” to make a point about the person’s character. Now biting one’s own self conjures up a picture of somebody that just couldn’t hold that meanness in no matter what and if there weren’t no one around to be mean to they’d just go ahead and bite their own selves just to feel good about being so mean.

Rattlesnakes are low down. That’s in the western, cowboy sense of not being tall, or in another way, not being of good moral fiber as in “He’s a no-good low-down snake in the grass.” meaning, well, he’s a low-down no-good snake in the grass. Stay away from it and don’t have no truck with it at all. Don’t do anything fun with it like go camping or maybe out to dinner, or even just have a friendly conversation on a hot muggy day. Because they’ll bite ya. Even if you don’t need getting bit. They’ll do it just to see that look on your face.

A really good friend of mine, a lady of good reputation from North Carolina, was one time jumping over one when it reared up and bit her in the foot. There wasn’t no need for it  to do that. She was just trying to get out of her garage and saw it laying there so rather than step on it, she’d been well brought up by a loving southern family and taught not to go stomping around on snakes, so she took a mighty leap in the air to avoid it, but that didn’t mean anything to that no-good low-down snake. It just up and bit her good while she was in mid-air.  She survived after using up most of the anti-snake venom in the western speaking world and to this day doesn’t think very highly of rattlesnakes. See that just illustrates my point. For a good southern woman who likes everything and is good her own self to everybody and everything to be made to feel that way is just not right. Rattlesnakes are just mean.

 “Why do they have to be so damned bitey all the time?” is a question asked by many snake bit or unsnake bit folks who happened to be minding their own business when coming close to one, who then experienced their meanness in one shape or another. “We wasn’t doing nothing to it and it tried to bite us. That’s low down.” See that’s the problem with the world today. There’s this feeling that everything in the natural world has got to be your friend. Well that flat is untrue. Wrong. There’s plenty of stuff in the world that doesn’t give a flat flying fig about you at all. Snakes, particularly Rattlesnakes don’t care about you. Politicians, and I almost have to apologize to snakes when I lump them together, don’t care about you. And I almost forgot, Badgers. Badgers are almost worse than snakes when it comes to not caring. For proof of that just type in badgers in the search box at the top of this page and you’ll see lots of stories about how mean and uncaring badgers is. The Thing About Badgers is just one story that proves my point. Great White Sharks is another. When is that last time you heard about a Great White Shark gently nudging a drowning baby back to the boat to be rescued. Nope you haven’t. Know why? They don’t like you. They is just mean.

The snake in the picture above is a case in point. It is currently doing life in a New Mexico, correctional facility for biting a god-fearing, but upstanding citizen who wasn’t doing nothing but trying to hit it with a stick. Unfortunately for the citizen that stick was too short and well, it ended badly. Now the snake is doing hard time for just being true to itself. Which is a good thing, don’t get me wrong. They should lock them all up and it wouldn’t bother me at all. This one is participating in a new type of therapeutic rehabilitation where it is exposed to people by being placed on display in a glass cage where people can come up and bang on the glass to annoy it. The idea being that this will change the snakes attitude about people and it might, maybe could be, released back into society. It seems to be working as the snake has become pretty indifferent to people in general. But every once in a while a cute little kid will come up to the cage and raise their delicate little kid hand to smack the glass a good one when the snake will suddenly lunge at it, rapping its fangs a good one on the glass just millimeters away from burying those long teeth it that pudgy little hand. So I guess it needs a little more time in the box, so to speak.

I guess if there’s a moral to this story it’s not everything wild in this world likes you. So leave it alone. Don’t mess with it. And try to have good luck when all else fails. Because there are things out there that are so mean they’ll bite their own self just for the hell of it. Rattlesnakes is one of them. Or if you can’t do that make sure your stick is long enough.

Redtail Hawk 1 Rattlesnake 0

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RedTail6934

As they say out here in Colorado “The mail needed picking up” and since we occasionally get financial remuneration via snail mail and we haven’t had any interns able to pass the strict bonding requirements we have here at The Institute, it fell to the Director to go and get  the mail.

Our mail box is located down the five mile dirt road that gets you up and down from the mountain top The Institute is located on, to the modern one lane highway below. On the way down the ‘hill’ you run the chance of seeing wild animals being wild, such as turkeys walking around trying not to get eaten by the coyotes, elk in both male and female forms, mule deer of course, bears, just the black ones not the big grizzlies that roam further north, foxes, the red ones, the aforementioned coyotes, Eagles mostly Goldens but once in a while a bald one will fly by, and lots of birds. Everything from songbirds to grouse and now some Chukar. Hawks, falcons, pelicans flying by to get to somewhere where there is enough water, lots of migratory birds and our favorite species the Redtail hawk.

The Redtail is the hands down favorite because it does one really neat thing. It hunts, kills, and eats rattlesnakes. Rattlesnakes are what takes the fun out of running barefoot through the tall grass. Rattlesnakes bite. We had a neighbor near us, who was minding her own business doing absolutely nothing provoking, get bit and besides costing what a small Korean car costs it made her foot swell up to the size of your standard microwave oven. And she said it hurt too. A lot.

Most people in this country don’t like rattlesnakes. I mean, there’s a few that like them but they are not the majority by any means. People who don’t like them, the rattlesnakes not the people who do like them, generally hit them with a shovel until they’re dead. It is said by those folks who do like rattlesnakes that one of the reasons we should take these rattlesnakes close to our bosoms, are of the opinion that they do good by eating rodents, therefore let’s have them hang around doing that. Others say “Nope. Don’t think so. Gonna kill ’em”.  We believe that if they, the rattlesnakes, want to act that way they should do it way, and I mean way far away from where good American taxpaying citizens hang around. So there is a difference of opinion there.

It’s amazing that the Redtail hawk sides with the shovel smacking people and kill every one of those rattlers they see. They also pass this trait on to the young Redtail hawks by bringing home the snake, often still wriggling, for their little ones to eat. We at The Institute believe this is laudable behavior and compliment the Redtail parents on their good sense whenever we chance to speak with them.

The image above, which was taken just across the highway from our mailbox, shows the Redtail parent in the act of taking the rattlesnake it has just that moment caught, to a tall telephone pole where it would begin the process of making it not alive. Then it flew it back to the nest for the young to eat. We cheered and gave it the universal thumbs up gesture of approval before returning to sorting out the bills from the junk mail, then throwing the entire mess in the dumpster. I know, you’re saying if you’re just going to throw it all in the dumpster why bother sorting it out. We sort because every once in a while there is a check in there and then we’d have to go back and do dumpster diving which is not very dignified for a Director of a major Institute like ours to be doing. Which of course brings us to, if you’re looking for nominations for the “Most Useful Bird of the Year” award we heartily recommend Nature’s helper the Redtail hawk. Remember vote now and vote often. These birds need our support.