Up Moses Creek: Head on a swivel!
The bold chickadee in our yard selects sunflower seeds to eat out of Becky’s hand.
Donated photo
It was the yard birds that alerted Becky, “a crowd of them,” as she put it; chickadees, titmice and wrens all scolding their heads off at something under the fringe tree. And when she looked out the back door, there the thing was.
“Rattlesnake!” I heard her call. And not just any rattlesnake, but one we both took to be Cinnamon Bun, the name Becky had given our female yard rattler the summer before. (See “Cinnamon Bun eats out” in The Smoky Mountain News, Dec. 11, 2024.) She was sliding along toward the same flowerbed at the back door where she’d spent most of last summer, tucked inside a hollow railroad tie.
Right above the rattlesnake, we also thought we recognized a chickadee that demands food from Becky. When Becky steps out, he’ll hover near her for a fluttering second, then wait in the fringe tree until she comes back out with sunflower seeds. Then he lands on her fingertips and picks out the plumpest seed to eat.
It looked like this same bold chickadee was at the forefront of the bird cacophony in the tree. Becky went into chickadee imitation mode: “Better watch your step, rattlesnake. You think you got big pecs? Wait’ll you feel my pecks on your head!” But bold chickadee, we noticed, stayed in the tree with all the other birds. He turned out to be more of a choir director than Beowulf with his thanes battling scaly monsters.
The birds stayed in the tree, but we didn’t stay in the house. The previous summer, Cinnamon Bun had shown up in early July, but here it was mid-August and we’d about lost hope that we were going to see her.
On close inspection, however, this rattler didn’t quite add up to Cinnamon Bun. It did have the same toasty brown banding, but it did not have as many rattles. And when I laid a yardstick beside it — gingerly — the snake came out shorter than Cinnamon Bun’s 42 inches. Also, the bold chickadee was right: this rattler had “pecs.” There was a row of well-defined flesh running down each side of the snake’s back, giving it a square-shoulder look. Cinnamon Bun’s back was rounded.
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Becky contacted a herpetologist we’d gotten to know from last summer and sent him a photograph. Listening to her description of the reptile and examining the picture she sent, he surmised that the “pecs “ on the snake’s back indicated that it was “a very well-fed, robust male.” And, since mid-August is prime mating season for timber rattlers, he suggested that a receptive female might have been in the yard and that this male was looking for her.
Our back screen door used to close tight, but over the years it’s started to hang slackly on its hinges. It’s a lackadaisical door. As we went back inside, I noticed that Becky pulled it closed, latched it. “I don’t like that crack.”
We didn’t really think the snake would come in after us. Timber rattlers mind their own business. And besides mating, their business is to eat chipmunks and other rodents and to bask in the sun. You’ve usually got to stick your nose into a rattlesnake’s business by messing with it or by accidentally stepping on it to trigger a strike. One reason why more than a few men show up “snake bit” in emergency rooms every year is because someone dared them to pick a rattler up. A few of these fellows are even bitten on the lips because they were egged on to kiss it.
In no way do I mean to make light of rattlesnake bites! A snake bite is serious, and the only effective treatment is a set of car keys and a trip to the nearest emergency room. Besides great swelling and pain from the venom, the risks of tissue death, infections and permanent limb damage are great. A few people have anaphylactic reactions. Still, on average only around five to six Americans die yearly from strikes by all types of venomous snakes. This is partly due to medical treatment and antivenin.
After Cinnamon Bun showed up the previous summer, Becky, who’s a retired librarian, checked out of the library at Western Carolina University a stack of rattlesnake literature, and there she discovered the writings of W. H. “Marty” Martin. Martin was said to know more about timber rattlers than any living man. It’s reported that when just a young boy in Virginia, he found a den of timber rattlers and was stricken with love at first sight. Learning about rattlesnakes and saving them from destruction became his lifelong pursuit. Becky was impressed with Martin’s detailed observations about these much-maligned creatures. Wanting to send him a thank you note, she looked for his address, only to discover that in August of 2022 he had been struck by a timber rattler at home and died. He was 80.
In spite of the danger to us from their venom, when it comes to sheer existence, it is rattlesnakes, and all other snakes, for that matter, that are the ones put to it. They die by our outright killing of them or by being run over or by having their habitat bulldozed, and in a dozen other ways. It would take a long string of zeros after the number 1 to add up the annual deaths.
I confess to having done my part once, 25 years ago. I was leading a group on a canoe trip down a remote river in Oregon, and we’d set up tents for the night when we heard buzzing in the middle of our campsite. It was a western timber rattler. I worried that if I scooted the snake out of camp, it might come back at night, when people would be getting out of their tents to look at the stars or to pee. So, I decided to kill it.
Keeping my eye on the snake, I asked for someone to bring me a stick—and was handed a twig! I said, “How about something bigger?" I looked up just in time to see one of the men running towards us (the snake and me) with a log raised high and unsteady over his head. Luckily he missed me, and he missed the snake too—which then coiled up on a hair trigger. When you’re in a tight spot, there’s nothing so helpful as macho in a panic. I went and got a canoe paddle.
That unpleasantness done with, I skinned and dressed the snake, and sliced the meat into little pork chops. Battered and fried, it made a tasty hors d’oeuvre. And, yes, everyone partook. Keep in mind, the group had been eating my cooking for days, so battered and fried bark would have been a treat.
Coming back to this August: Becky heard the yard birds launch into another scolding fit the next morning, and we watched as the muscular rattler emerged from Cinnamon Bun’s old flowerbed. He slid across the yard slowly, looking this way and that, his black tongue flicking out to taste the air. He was on the hunt all right, but maybe not for chipmunks. A round-backed and ready female was on his mind. On he went into the woods and disappeared. Becky christened him Cinnamon Bum.
DIY. Want to have your own yard rattler? Here are four easy steps. Step one: hang out bird feeders. Chipmunks will come to eat the spilled seed on the ground. Step two: build drystack rock walls for the chipmunks to hide in. Once they are well-fed and feel safe, the chipmunks themselves will take care of step three: they’ll multiply. That will draw the serpent. Step four is what Becky now says when she steps out the back door, “Head on a swivel!”
(Burt and Becky Kornegay live in Jackson County. “Up Moses Creek” comes out the second week of each month.)
