The Junk Pile Surprise

Recent Retrospect: September 26, 2006

I got part way through writing about the handyman from Hell and realized that it remains an upsetting subject so I will write about a different kind of snake today.

There certainly wasn't much here when we arrived and what little there was had been picked over well in the last few decades by outsiders. One of my favorite treks early on was to poke around in the junk across the road. It was obvious that one of the previous owners did not believe in recycling and scrapping old metal. Bailing and barbed wire by the cubic yard, squashed oil drums, rustic fence posts and a curious mix of debris from old vehicles and a burnt trailer. I used the charred bathtub as a perch when I had to make calls since the cell phone would only pick up a signal if I walked out closer to the middle of the canyon. I nearly froze my butt off out there in the open last winter and it probably contributed to my current complete disdain of talking on the phone. But I digress slightly.

It was a little over a month ago when I revisited the junk pile in search of some rustic planking. The pup came with me and dashed and poked around frantically since 'across the road' is normally verboten territory. I wasn't having much success scrounging in the closer piles so I wandered a little deeper into the sage. Yes, here was a promising stash! Just before I reached for the uppermost boards, I happened to notice an unusual, undulated shape otherwise blending in with the weathered grays of the wood. I'll be darned - it had to be a rattlesnake. Just then, I heard Brou crashing his way back towards me. Not good timing so I enticed him into a game of tag and we ran back to the trailer. Once he was safely inside, I grabbed the camera and left instructions with Mark to not let the pup out again until I had returned.

The rattler, it seems, was as chilled as I and trying to soak up a little early morning sun. It seemed to be engrossed in this process and ignoring me so I got to within maybe four feet of it and took a couple of photos. I don't find the zoom quality on this camera to be particularly dependable but I wasn't about to get nose to nose with the sleeping dragon so the photo clarity is not the best. The head of the rattler is shown in the lower right hand corner, peeking out of a crack in a plank. Unfortunately, his rattle was hidden under another plank on the left side of the photo.

With my photo evidence now taken care of and me still not convinced that it really was a rattler, I had to be the bad kid and go get a LONG stick, not quite the proverbial ten foot pole but sensibly long for the occasion. Nudge. No response. Poke. A mildly discernible response. Poke, nudge, poke, poke, poke. It opened its eyes e-v-e-r so slowly, their slit black pupils giving me a very cold and inscrutable stare. After a moment more of staring, it slowly straightened itself out as it stretched away to the shelter of another board and vanished completely. The last I saw of this snake was its rattles, all stacked neatly one atop the other like increasingly smaller beads on a dowel. They rattled only lightly from the snake's exiting motion. With no more mischief to be had, yours truly returned home safely with a new tale to tell.

Next post: a couple or three days from now