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.

A female timber rattler lived inside an old railroad tie beside our back porch last summer, coming out in the afternoons to lie on the steps in the sun. Curled up like that, the snake showed swirls of light brown, with dark-toasted bands, and her scales gave off a sugary glaze, so Becky named her Cinnamon Bun.

Summer in Southern Appalachia affords many opportunities to watch and learn more about our diverse species of wildlife. Near the border of Western North Carolina and East Tennessee, I see migrating and breeding birds, wild turkeys rearing poults, white-tailed deer with their fawns and the occasional black bear.