Great thread!
No Pics, but too many stories to tell here.
Growing up in the Sierra Nevada Foothills country of California we had lots of snakes. Most kid's mothers shout ,"Be Careful" when they head outside. My mother's mantra was, "Watch for Snakes!" My family used to kill every one we saw on the ranch, but then we evolved into a "let them be" attitude. My brother and I were quite the amateur herpetologists. We handled rattlers from a young age. None of us ever got bit, but we lost dogs and an expensive Appaloosa to snake bites over the years. My dad saved a black lab which had jumped in front of me as a very small child and taken a bite on the nose. He dipped the dog's nose in kerosene, which he said was anti-coagulant. To this day I wonder at some of Pop's cowboy remedies, but the dog lived.
Mom finally pushed Pop to get the door sills installed in our ranch house because she got tired of snakes coming inside to lay on the cool concrete floors.
My favorite snake story is that I had a college field biology class and our textbook stated that the Great Western Diamondback never exceeds 4 1/2' in length. I called BS out loud in class. This resulted in the professor challenging me to prove it wrong. About 1 hour cruising the white dirt roads of Madera County that weekend netted us a fat 8' rattler. We caught it and I did a show and tell in class with it the next week.
I am completely comfortable with rattlers. Years later my work took me on extended trips to the Atlanta area. Every time we went to the Chattahoochee to recreate, someone would drag out the story of a woman water skier who fell into a knot of Moccasins and was beyond saving by the time they got to her. Local myth? It didn't matter to me. The idea of a killer snake that likes to strike first and ask questions later really kept me on my toes on and off the water in the South. I never did see a Moccasin.
