The Mohave Rattler

Meet an upset Mohave rattler. Again came the now familiar cry -- "snake!" But this time it was I who noticed the hefty serpent at road edge. Either a western diamondback or a Mohave rattler-- and it proved to be a 3 1/2 foot long example of the latter. Jake had been getting a few minutes of shuteye before we reached our chosen hunting area. We expected it to be a long night as we searched out the anurans. The torrential rains that had fallen for the last 2 hours has stopped but the desert was soaked, dry creeks were raging and playas were filled. My yell jerked Jake instantly awake and by the time I had stopped the car he was piling out. Mohave rattlesnakes (yes, it's now spelled with an "h" and not a "j"), Crotalus s. scutulatus, have reputations for having bad tempers and this one was certainly living up to that reputation. The hefty snake had begun striking the moment Jake had stepped from the car. Not only did the snake strike so hard that it slid forward each time on the wet and slippery road, but the striking was incessant, causing Jake to take couple of involuntary steps backward from the pavement. Of course this brought him (equally involuntarily) into an unexpected rear attack by formidably armed "monkey-get-back-bushes" (mesquite, cats claw, and beaver-tail cacti). Then and there Jake performed an impromptu rendition of that horrid old dance the we old timers refer to as the "green-apple-quickstep." Jake proved far more agile than I had credited him to be! But eventually Jake's perseverance prevailed, photos of the Mohave were taken and we were on our way again. More photos under the jump

We placed the rattler in a bucket while we readied our cameras.

With the open desert only a heartbeat away, this Mohave rattler was not interested in allowing us a photo-op.