Discussion: rattlesnake

It's a pretty rare thing to find a venomous snake in New England, though I know people who have. I've spent a lot of my life outdoors, including a fair amount of time out west (lived in Colorado for four years), and I still haven't come across a rattlesnake in the wild.

I've seen a couple - one on the Metacomet Trail on the Newgate Ridge and another in the 'Gunks peacefully sunning itself on a cold March day when I nudged it with my boot. Didn't move.

The only place I've seen one is in southern California when I was living there back in '92-'93. I do recall an amusing time watching relays at French Creek over 20 years ago, and somebody came running back from the spectator control yelling, "there's a copperhead at the last control!" Well, that seemed interesting, if a bit unlikely. But right behind the first guy was the next guy. "No, it's a rattlesnake!, a diamondback rattler!" ReallY? in Pennsylvania? So I saunter over to see a harmless milksnake there, and nudge him off into the leaves so he can stay out of trouble.

Pretty sure it was a rattlesnake at Blue Hills years ago (late 70s) as well as at Silvermine, early 80s. I came upon a Swede at the latter (near a flag), standing there screaming (and quitting, too).

There was a story in Outside Magazine many years ago recounting a fictional encounter with a rattlesnake in the Blue Hills, with the encounter leading to the demise of the human participant. I'm sure it freaked some people out, even though it was definitely not something that really happened.

It was a chapter excerpted from a book. The title of the chapter was "A Worst Case Scenario". The hypothetical victim died because everything went wrong -- snake just coming out of hibernation with a full venom load, he stepped on it just as it was striking, so it delivered all of the venom, there were delays in getting him to the hospital, and the docs made some missteps in the treatment.

That said, people in snake-handling cults die all the time. But I think they refuse treatment, with the notion being that they are in no danger as long as they're sincerely faithful. So I guess they technically don't die of snakebite, they die of doubt.

Brace Mountain (very close to where CT, MA, and NY meet) has a cairn on top that has been known to harbor a rattlesnake. The paraglider pilots who launch from there keep an eye out for it.