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Just as a matter of interest, when our eldest daughter was 5 years old, she 
and her dad were out in a field, hand-shocking hay.  Our dog bounced into a 
row of brush and my husband, an old Navy man, said it sounded like "General 
Alarm" going off.  Our dog had just disturbed a rattlesnake that was lying 
there attempting to digest its latest meal.  My husband speared the snake 
with his pitchfork and brought it home.  It was 46" long, had 13 rattles, 
and had a big bulge in its midsection.  Upon eviscerating the snake, he 
discovered the big bulge to be a complete cottontail rabbit.  That's been 
nearly 50 years ago.

Barbara

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Don Huston" <donhuston@xxxxxxx>
To: <ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, February 13, 2007 11:02 AM
Subject: [RC] Snakes / SoCal Rattlers


> Hello Dawn,
> My horses have never spooked at a snake that makes no noise and I, like 
> your husband, have ridden right over a rattler early in the morning when 
> it was cold and the snake did not buzz. On the other hand every time one 
> of those bad boys lights up their buzzer from the bushes along the trail 
> my horses (5 different ones over the years) have always swerved, stopped 
> dead, squirted ahead, or otherwise reacted strongly to that deadly sound. 
> Here is an unusual "snake story". This happened on a summer afternoon on a 
> warm sunny day when rattlers are likely to be out and I had already heard 
> several buzz in the bushes as I passed. I am riding alone downhill on a 
> very dusty curvy single track that is 6-8 inches deep from lots of use. 
> The trail is steep enough that rocks will roll some when dislodged and we 
> are trotting but not too fast. We come around a corner and maybe 100 feet 
> up ahead I see dust rising from the trail and it's moving downhill, who 
> disturbed those rocks? My horse drops his head like he does when getting 
> ready to stomp an aggressive dog and surges ahead closing fast on the 
> dust. I'm trying to get his head up cause I'm off balance and starting to 
> go up on his neck and what the hell is making that dust? Now I'm starting 
> to hear the buzzing and can see a fat 3 foot rattler wiggling as fast as 
> he can down the trail and bouncing of the steep sides and rolling over and 
> whipping up the dust like I have never seen in my life. Of course at the 
> sound of the buzzer my brave horse that had been thinking about stomping 
> some varmint in the dust now leaps off the trail leaving me almost in mid 
> air over the still speeding rattler but my "bucking rolls" locked firmly 
> over my legs just above the knees worked just like they had many times in 
> the past to keep my ass in the saddle. So I get my horse stopped about 8 
> feet to the side of this now thoroughly screwed up rattler still thrashing 
> downhill in the dust and buzzing and now trying to coil and flipping over 
> and tangling up...it was laughable now that I was safely to the side. The 
> trail flattened out some there and the snake shot off the trail into the 
> bushes and continued to buzz for as long as I could hear it. So now I am 
> an official "snake herder" and am looking forward to trying "cats". X;{
> Don Huston
>
> At 09:41 AM 2/13/2007 Tuesday, you wrote:
> > Hi Chrystal,
> > I don't think you'll have to worry about seeing many snakes on trail.  I 
> > live in East Texas, and we have TONS of snakes here.  I love snakes, and 
> > am usually watching for them, hoping to see a neat one, and I almost never 
> > see one.  :(  I think I saw two in all of the miles I rode last year, and 
> > one of those was a small Texas rat snake laying off in the grass and hard 
> > to see.  As far as horses' reactions to them, don't believe all the movies 
> > you see where horses see a snake and rear in panic.  Our horses have zero 
> > reaction to them.  The other snake I saw on trail was a copperhead that my 
> > husband rode right over without seeing, and his horse never even saw it. 
> > I swerved around it, and my horse didn't react at all.  A couple of years 
> > ago, an Eastern Coachwhip (a very fast black snake) shot across the trail 
> > right in front of my horse, and my horse just glanced down and kept on 
> > going.  It was just the movement that caught his eye, not the fact that it 
> > was a snake.
> >
> > Everyone has their phobia...mine is spiders.  Uggh!
> >
> > Dawn in East Texas (who loves snakes, but will freak out at contacting a 
> > spider web)
>
> Don Huston at cox dot net
>
>
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