In my extensive travels throughout the breadth of the American West I have seen numerous rattlesnakes up close and personal. Some sadly dead in the middle of a road but many alive and going about their normal, daily snake lives and business. Most are simply moving from one spot to the next and I appreciate them at a distance and allow them to go on their way. Others we find coiled up in a relaxed repose (not in their defensive posture) in the shade of a bush like that time Willow and I were in the Arizona desert setting up camp. A few others we find coiled up and angry, head up, tail rattling showing their displeasure at our close proximity like that time in the San Bernardino Forest when Willow was actually bitten, twice, by a Southern Pacific Rattlesnake and I had to rush her to the nearest Vet about an hour away in Yucaipa. Two days in the hospital, two infusions with VenomVet antivenin and a $2000 bill later she was on the mend but with a large, grapefruit-sized, shaved lump on her throat as a reminder of how close I had come to losing her. She had been taking rattlesnake vaccine at least once a year (and usually every 6 months) and if she not been vaccinated I fully expect she would have died.
After Willow’s rattlesnake drama we took a Rattlesnake Aversion Training (R.A.T.) course (a.k.a. Rattlesnake Avoidance Training) in Palm Springs, CA and I bought a quality Doc Sewards Snake Hook. Ever since then, when we are in Rattlesnake country during rattlesnake season I always have the snake hook with me, just in case, and that turned out to be a good thing.
On this occasion we were at one of my favorite spots in southern Oregon which is a not-so-secret area near a swimming hole on Josephine Creek in the Eight Dollar Mountain area. During weekdays we mostly had the area to ourselves. Weekends are when more than a few groups of people show up at the swimming hole and ruin the tranquility. During the uncrowded time we went on hikes, explored the creek, hung out around our campsite and Gia spent a lot of her time harassing the local lizard population. She fancies herself an enthusiastic hunter but thankfully she is not very good at it. In general, in the wild animal population which are predators, their attempt/kill ratio is 10-1, meaning, for every ten attempts to catch their prey, they are successful once. Keeping that ratio in mind, Gia is an awful predator and would quickly starve to death in the wild if all she was attempting to catch was lizards and I was not around to feed her the tasty kibble she so obviously depends on. So that’s good, I like lizards and root for them to survive her blundering attempts at ending their lives but am happy that she is keeping herself gleefully occupied and getting some good exercise without my direct participation.
My vantage point during inactive/down time at this spot was sitting in my comfy Amazon Basics Zero Gravity Folding Reclining Lounge Chair, reading a book near the edge of the rocky drop next to the creek. I kept seeing Gia out of the corner of my eye making quick movements and digging under boulders to try and get at whatever was catching her attention.
Every so often a lizard would make a break for it and she would chase it up a tree.
This led me to assume that the only creatures she was interacting with were the local lizards and so I discounted the little nagging worry in the back of my mind about any rattlesnake danger.
During one of her extended under-boulder excavations I happened to notice her jump backwards with a quizzical look on her face and she did the iconic canine head tilt back and forth to indicate her confused interest and/or her attempt to hear “whatever it was” better. I heard nothing from my spot around 7 meters away. I did not have my phone near me but you know the behavior I mean. It looks like this:
I got up and walked over to see what could be so interesting and that is when I heard the iconic rattlesnake “rattle.” Gia was seemingly smart and staying back as I carefully looked around to find the snake. I was wearing short pants and flip flops so I was taking things slowly and with extra care. Once I spotted it coiled up on the dirt in the open between a few large rocks and a small downed branch I went and grabbed my snake hook and went to work. The video is of poor and unsteady quality as I was focused on getting closer to the snake without stepping or tripping on a rock or the branch rather than filming an award-winning wildlife documentary.
Once I figured out a safe path forward I used the snake hook to gently lift the snake up and over the branch and carefully walked it across the forest service road/creek to a spot with numerous critter holes in rocky areas so hopefully the snake would be content over there and away from us. I removed the sound in this second video because of my uncharitable comments to Gia. If you’d like to imagine the soundtrack just think of the polar opposite of “Good girl Gia, you are sooo smart and behaving perfectly in this situation and I can think of nothing you should be doing differently.”
At the end when the video tilts the snake was starting to come off the hook and so I let it down quickly and my videography suffered. I followed along as the snake moved towards the area I wanted it to be in, gently touching it with the hook to herd it and remind it to “keep moving in that direction.” Once it got there I stepped back, gave it a compliment, wished it well and let it go on its way hoping it would stay on that side of the watery divide until after we left the next day. Spoiler…it did.
I had to remind Gia a couple of times to “stay over here” and stop looking for her new scaly friend and she luckily took the hint and there were no more interactions with it for the rest of our stay. Success!
If this encounter was on a hike we would have simply moved around the snake and went on our way leaving it in peace. This though was in our already set-up campsite and I was not about to break it all down and move unless we had parked on a nest with dozens if not hundreds of rattlesnakes in residence. Since I was caught off guard a bit I forgot to practice a few of the things I learned at the R.A.T. class namely restraining the dog out of harm’s way and from underfoot. Had Gia been put in the Tacoma or leashed to it or a tree I would have removed one of the more stressful parts of the whole situation – dealing with an overly excited animal I care about trying to get up close and personal with a rattlesnake. By deflecting my complete attention away from the dangerous animal and splitting my thought processes I made the whole situation more difficult than it needed to be. That one mistake put both her and myself in more danger than we should have been in. I will not make that mistake next time and I am thankful that gorgeous, venomous creature was pretty chill during the whole procedure. Good snake.
I gained a few takeaways from this experience. Firstly, the interaction and experience were a blessing. Rattlesnakes are amazing creatures that have been around, relatively unchanged, for tens of millions of years. They are well adapted and very good at what they do. Many people know about the existence of rattlesnakes. Very few get to actually see, much less interact with them… up close. I am thrilled this ended well for all three parties involved. A bit of stress, probably more for the snake but no one got hurt or killed and everyone is still living their normal lives. I now know I need to take Gia to a R.A.T. course as soon as possible. There are several options available both back up home in Oregon and numerous regions in California which we frequent regularly. The second item on her to-do list is starting her on the rattlesnake vaccine. I’ll get both those tasks done in the next few months and write a post about the class when the time comes. Stay tuned.
Have you ever come across rattlesnakes in the wild with your dog(s)? How did you deal with the situation? Did it go completely as planned? Let us know in the comments (unless you killed the snake and then I am disappointed in your lack of vision and empathy and don’t want to know).
Stay safe out there.