Reconnect With Nature Blog

Moving A Rattlesnake

For some time, a female Western Diamondback Rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox) has been hanging around our house. She spent the winter sound asleep under our porch, and now that the weather has turned warmer, she has been emerging to enjoy the daytime temperatures. Her favorite has been to curl up underneath a low rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus nauseosus) right next to the porch, and either snooze or delicately watch the passing scene.  Sometimes a distant rabbit would catch her eye, or an Ash-Throated Flycatcher (Myiarchus cinerascens) nesting nearby would hover over her, and she would lazily turn her head from one side to another, before curling up again in a new posture of repose.

Our problem was that she was curled up near our back door, near one of the main paths into and out of the house. We changed our behavior to accommodate her.   Most of the time, we would go out of the front door and swing around the other door, giving her a wide berth. Sometimes we would look out the window at the back porch to see if she was out. But her camouflage is so wonderful that she disappears into the background and is extremely difficult to see, even when the distance from the window to her is less than 2 meters (6 feet). Looking for her is like looking at one of the optical illusions found in books on vision. You look and see nothing, and then you look again and suddenly she pops into view where seconds ago you could have sworn that there was just bare dirt.

We tried to be respectful of her right to be there. However, we were faced with a dilemma. First, as a female, she was probably pregnant, and would soon have 4-5 babies, young rattlesnakes whose venom is just as potent as an adult’s, and who do not know yet when to bite and when not to bite. Second, as the days and nights heat up, she will become more active, and the probability of stepping on her somewhere around the house at night will become much greater.

She is a good-natured snake, and probably would not bite us when we walk near her. Last year, we must have walked past her many times, sometimes centimeters from her nose, without realizing that she was there. Even now, she lets us walk to within a half-meter or less without any concern. Before I realized that she was planning to be a permanent fixture of the back porch scene, I walked out the back door, my mind engrossed in a problem, and only peripherally noticed that there was a one-meter snake lying across the porch. I stopped perhaps 15 cm (6 in) from her head. Her response was to lazily flick her rattles twice, as if to say, hey stupid, watch where you’re going!

But accidentally stepping on her at night is a real concern. And while she is good natured, we have no illusions that she might not bite if someone inadvertently hurt her. Responding defensively to sudden pain seems to be a basic animal instinct. Even the most loving dogs will bite their people when hurt and in pain, not out of malice, but out of an instinct to defend themselves.

We talked about what to do. On the one hand, this is her home, and we did not want to deprive her of her land and burrow. On the other hand, there was the issue of safety, both for us and for her. We had gotten quite fond of her.  Could we reach a compromise that would be good for her and good for us?

Finally, we decided that moving the snake would be best for all concerned. I contacted a friend who is an expert on rattlesnake behavior. She agreed to come and help with the move, bringing her tongs, padded so as not to hurt a snake and attached to a 2 meter (6 ft) pole.  The tongs deftly uncurled the snake from the rabbitbrush.  My friend pointed out to me that it is very easy to damage the snake’s spine, so we needed to be careful not to drop her, and we needed to pick her up so that the head end and one-third of the body was on one side of the tongs and the tail end and two-thirds of the body was on the other side.  She had 10 rattles on her tail. My friend said that these snakes molt twice a year, adding a rattle each time they molt, so the snake was probably 5 years old. We placed her into a bucket, and the lid was closed.

Then there was the problem of where to take her. My friend told me that studies have shown that rattlesnakes displaced even one kilometer (0.6 mi) away from their home range have a much greater chance of dying, probably because they are placed into unfamiliar terrain and are more easily found by predators, or become dehydrated from lack of cover.

We decided to move the snake away from the house, some 100 meters (300 feet), into an area of rocks and bushes. The rocks had lots of crevices, and there were abundant holes underneath them where a snake could slither and hide from the sun.  Nearby were woodrat nests, suggesting the potential for an abundant food supply.  The snake could come out from under the rocks and bask in the bushes, while still having plenty of cover to protect her from predators.  It seemed to us a perfect place for her to have her babies.

My friend lifted the snake out of the bucket and placed her on the ground. The snake slithered quickly under a large rock, rattling at us to show her displeasure with being handled.

Now we are hoping that she stays there. We have covered up the knot holes that she was using to get under the porch. For us and for her, the new place seems like a good solution. But will she cooperate? Time will tell.

Animals And The Relativity Of Time

Yesterday, as I went to check my hummingbird feeder, a male Anna’s hummingbird went zooming past my face and stopped a few centimeters from my nose, hovering and looking at me. Then, apparently reassured that I was not going to tamper with his food supply, he zoomed off to a nearby tree to sit and watch for intruding males that he could chase off with vigorous displays of speed.

I thought about how fast he can fly.  His reaction time to obstacles in his environment is so much faster than mine.  He can fly several rings around me before I can even lift my arm to my face, and he can change course before I can even comprehend where he is going. Apparently the processing time for incoming stimuli is faster in his brain than it is in mine.  His physiological processes are much faster than mine as well. His heart beats around 600-1000 times per minute, while mine beats around 60 times per minute.

This led to me wondering if time is the same for all animals.  We humans have an average lifespan of around 70 years.  A dog’s lifespan is around 10 years. A hummingbird lives for perhaps 6 years. And adult honeybees live for 30 days. Do they all perceive time the same way that we do? Is a day for us the same as a day for a hummingbird, or for a honeybee?

Soon I will have to drop off my dog at a kennel, so that I can leave for a weekend speaking engagement. My dog will be there for only three days. But is his perception of time the same as mine? If a dog lives 10 years, then each of our years is the equivalent of 7 dog years, and each of our days is the equivalent of 7 dog days. Does that mean that it will seem like three weeks in the kennel for him, rather than three days?

And speaking of perception, I remember having one of the old-time vinyl records of animal sounds, where a whale song was sped up 20 times and sounded like a bird song, and a bird song was slowed down 20 times and sounded like a whale. Does that mean that birds can process sounds faster than whales? I know of course that low frequency sounds (such as those found in whale songs) propagate farther than the higher-frequency sounds found in bird songs, and this is an advantage for animals that communicate over long distances. But is that the whole story? Maybe whales live longer and perceive time as being slower than shorter-lived birds.

Einstein showed that time was relative to the speed that one travels. Maybe the perception of time is relative to one’s lifespan, the speed at which we live.  For the Anna’s hummingbird, perhaps I am moving in extreme slow-motion, somewhere between dead-stop and barely-mobile.