How Would You React if You Stumbled Across Rattlers in Idaho or Utah?

Are you easily creeped out?

I saw a story online about a den of rattlesnakes.  They were coming out of hibernation.  In Colorado.  It is far enough away for me when it comes to venomous snakes, but don’t we have similar dens in Idaho?  I wrote last week that even the Magic Valley has places where rattlers are common, just not perhaps as much in some portions of the central highlands and the panhandle.

USA Today carried the story from Colorado. I went looking for the stand-alone video, which I’m posting below. I gather the video is from last spring, but you would probably see the snakes burrowed in the same place during most winters if you wanted to see them.

I don’t have a blood-curdling fear of snakes.  I just don’t want to share personal space with them.

When I was a little boy, there was a little girl I would play with.  She would snatch garter snakes and hold them behind their jaws and then spin them over her head.  Then she would let go and watch them spin away in the air.

Forward 30 years and one day, I saw her in a diner.  I asked if she still had the same approach.  “I hate snakes!” she answered.

Somewhere between her youth and adulthood, she developed a fear.  Probably a healthy fear.

I’ll mention one more snake story.  When I worked in television, a photographer and I attended a reptile convention.  The guy behind the camera thought I should drape a snake over my shoulders and deliver some pithy lines for the audience.  I declined.

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