Crotalus atrox

Here is a sequence of 4 shots from an encounter late this afternoon. This fellow is well fed and well mannered, even though these pictures illustrate
an active defense mode. I was out in the back yard (outside our perimeter wall) with my youngest daughter and we both got an adrenaline rush when
this one rattled off a warning that we were too close. We went back to the house to get the snake tongs and came back out so I could get some pictures.
I tried to get the snake to coil up and stay in one place, which it finally did after 5 or 6 attempts to crawl off.



Rattling all the time, it never once struck out at me or the snake tongs. As you can see I was clearly on the verge of getting past that restraint threshhold.
This snake was about 3.5 feet long and I kept that in mind as I was positioning for these pictures. These snakes can only strike from a distance of about half their
total body length, and I always put at least a 2X safety margin in to how close I'll get.



After I was satisfied that I got some decent shots I positioned the snake near a Round-tailed squirrel hole. It quickly went down about half of its body length
and then coiled around to rattle at me from there. Please note that we did not have any notion to kill this snake and left it less than 10 feet from where it was
originally found. Yes, they are dangerous but that can be managed by being more aware that we share our environment.



Do not attempt to handle or otherwise pester a venomous snake
unless you know what you are doing and are prepared to deal with
a potentially deadly bite. There. You've been warned.