My house is about a hundred yards from the edge of Phoenix's South Mountain Park, the largest municipal park in the country. I often hike there and sometimes take one or both of my grandchildren along. The park is full of desert wildlife, and we have seen so many: coyotes, javelina (a strange animal that looks like a pig, but is actually a rodent), several kinds of lizard, chipmunks and hundreds of birds, including hawks and owls and Gambel quail, with their jaunty topknots. But Sunday was a first.
My seven year old grandson and I hiked along a trail we have done several times before. The sun was bright, the air clear and dry and it was close to 80 degrees - a typical Arizona April day. We could see the entire city laid out below us, and tan mountains beyond. Distinctively shaped Camelback Mountain and Piestawa Peak, newly (and controversially) renamed recently for the first Native American woman killed in a foreign war. (She died in Iraq soon after the start of the war.)
As we walked, we talked about Jason's baseball game, odd rock outcrops, desert plants. Well, actually, I listened a lot while he talked. We sometimes call him motormouth. Alongside the trail, the occasional knee high green creosote bush blossomed with tiny yellow blooms.
Sudden quick movement at my feet caught my eye and I instinctively jumped back with a cry as a diamondback rattlesnake scooted ahead and stopped about six feet from us. It coiled into the strike position, a light dusty grey coil that blended perfectly with the rocks on the trail. We were very lucky that it was scared enough to run. Another step and one of us would have put a foot on it, and probably suffered a bite. All the horrible possibilities of that scenario went through my head.
Two things were special about this encounter. Although I am normally quite sharp-eyed at spotting animals in nature, this was the first snake I have seen on the mountain in almost six years of hiking here. Several friends have described encounters with rattlers, but I never saw one until then. But secondly, this rattler made no sound warning us of its presence. Very strange. I will certainly be more vigilant on future hikes.
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Comments: 24
Now there's a line you don't hear every day. Do they really think that way? (I have no experience with snakes, except the few my daughter owned and I wouldn't go near.)
Hope I never do...I sure am glad you and your grandson escaped without a bite.
Snakes have a right to live too. They were here before we were, so I hate to see them killed, just because they have the misfortune to encounter a human.
But if my grandson were threatened....
I used to live in rattlesnake country and my father killed several because he had small children working on a large garden where a snake could readily be startled. He didn't kill them unless they were a direct threat.
However, I also understood that snakes, as a general rule, do not attack people. It's one reason I've always struggled with Steve Irwin. The way he handled snakes was not a good lesson, I felt, for much of his audience: children. He'd be yanking on a bull viper, explaining how angry it was. Duh!
Then, when I lived in Maryland, there were copperheads. They also were not aggressive though I can recall a time when we almost had a very bad thing happen. My brother (6) and I were walking down to the creek barefoot (since we could do that there, unlike here - no fire ants, no chiggers) to go fishing with my uncle (who's younger than I am). Just as we're about to step on a flat rock, my uncle turned it over looking for worms - and found a nest of baby copperheads. I stayed calm, took my brother back up to the house and had a fit of shakes.
Now, here in Houston, I have heard, but haven't experienced, that Water Moccasins (or Cottonmouths as they are sometimes called) are more aggressive. I'm not sure if it's true or why it would be. My husband's boot was once bitten by a copperhead hiding in some local shrubbery, but its teeth didn't get through the boot.
Snakes scare me, but I don't feel malice against them and would take no action unless someone were threatened. I suspect most snakes have a similar stance.
Well said, AC. We disparage other creatures who live by killing their prey. But we are the ultimate predators. No other species kills more to provide its food than man. We go even further and kill other animals for "sport."
I hunted when I was a youngster, but now I find the idea repulsive. What kind of "sport" is it to take the life of an animal? Why does that give some of us pleasure?
I don't understand why this is considered an acceptable sport, yet killing small animals is also a sign of a mental instability.
Yet, hunting is huge here. Does that make sense?
Stephanie:
Copperheads are unpredictable. Growing up in Alabama, I encountered copperheads often. Once, while fishing in a creek, I stepped on one that wriggled from under my bare foot without striking. I damn near fainted at that, but my cousin killed it.
Another time while walking on a trail in a park near The Woodlands (just north of Houston) my wife almost stepped on a copperhead coiled in the trail, in the strike position. It made no effort to get away.
What was your wife doing in my neck of the woods?
We lived in the Woodlands twice between assignments in Indonesia. Another 3 years in Champions Park (on the northwest side of Houston). I commuted into downtown for a total of 6 years.
I have noticed that wild-life have altered their habits and usual stomping grounds too. In 27 years up here I have never encountered (smell or otherwise) a skunk on our levl of the hill, 500 yds. down the hill, yes, but never up here, yesterday, walking the dog, I smelled a skunk that had obviously been there recently!