That's not a twig ...

Posted by meli on Sunday, July 25, 2010 in pets, wild adventures | 3 comments

We went for a walk in the woods tonight hoping to find some blackberries. (ch ch ch ch, ah ah ah ah)

The sun was setting, so even thought we hadn't yet reached the berries, we decided to turn around and head back. Didn't want to get lost out there in the dark! (insert climactic horror music here)

About half way back (now dark), Tatum veered ahead of us on the trail, and I think our eyes all saw it at the same time...
"Ummm... that's not a twig" (ahem, about 500 yards back or so I had a little scare with a snake looking twig!).

A RATTLESNAKE!!! (though, Nick thought it was a type of cottonmouth at first)

Tatum was ON TOP of the snake. I mean, seriously, literally, standing RIGHT over the thing. The snake was frozen. Didn't move an inch as Tatum backed over it and came back to us. Wow, right? She is one lucky pooch! If it were Morgan over there, I think we'd have one dead dog on our hands right now. Where Tatum is calm and peaceful ... Morgan is spastic and "all up in yer business".

We leashed up the dogs and got a closer look.
As soon as Nick got closer to the tail he realized it was a rattler (I thought rattler right away ... perhaps that's just due to my ignorance, because every snake that has that coloring is a rattler in my mind, lol). Once he saw the tail, he looked at the pattern again, and guessed it was a Timber Rattlesnake.

I was busy taking photos and talking about it with Owen.  He kept walking in front of me as we circled around with the camera, putting himself between me and the snake. I had to keep scooting him back. As scared as he was, and as much as he didn't want to be standing there, he wanted me to be safe! Have I mentioned how much I LOVE that kid! Nick was checking out the snake as well... taking note of where his head was aimed. After a minute, Rylan wanted a quick closer look, so he went to stand by Dad. They talked about it for a minute, and after Rylan had enough and moved far back, Nick was stalking up behind it. Right as I was saying the words "You shouldn't creep up behind it, it's going to attack y..." the snake rattled it's tail, took a strike at Nick (it was CLOSE), and slithered into the trees. We could hear the rattle for atleast the next 5 minutes!

When the thing coiled and struck, Owen took off running screaming at us to "get away, get away, get away"! As soon as he saw that his family was all safe, the fear of what happened really kicked in, and he started crying. Poor little sweetie.

Rylan really didn't want much to do with it right from the get go. He got his little look, and he was ready to move on. "Come on guys, we should go. We should leave him alone. We should really really really just stop bothering him".

Larson wasn't able to get get too close a look. He was holding the dogs back while I took some photos, and then we were going to switch. We didn't know Dad was going to scare the poor thing away, ha. Larson is a trooper though. He was only about 10 feet away from it, so he was able to see it pretty well anyway.

We got home and looked it up in our books and online. Turns out he was a Leaf Colored Timber Rattler (nick was right!) ... very pretty!

I wasn't able to get "THE photo" ... you know... the one where you say "I got what I need, wrap it up".  You might not know exactly what you're looking for, but as soon as you see, you know you got what you want. I was working on it, but hadn't yet gotten it. Bummer. I did get a few close ones, though ...