ISLAND PACKET (Hilton Head, S Carolina) 22 June 07 Crabber uses net handle to kill rattlesnake that threatened island beachgoers (David Lauderdale)
A diamondback rattlesnake almost 5 feet long was killed at Burkes Beach on Hilton Head Island last week while scores of sunbathers sat nearby, unaware of the drama.
The snake was a testament to the amazing adaptability of a species pushed out by development, said a veteran Lowcountry naturalist.
But it also was a threat to families with young children playing on the beach, said the North Carolina man who almost stepped on it before chasing it down and clubbing it to death with the handle of his crab net.
"It was right between my legs," said Lonnie Deal, 48, of Statesville, N.C. "I still get the willy jillies whenever I think about it."
Deal had been crabbing in the Folly, a tidal offshoot of the Atlantic Ocean between Burkes Beach and Singleton Beach. When he started back to the truck to get more bait, he took a path that meanders over the dunes, linking to the wide, main walkway to the popular public beach at mid-island.
Deal said his girlfriend's 14-year-old son, Ethan Blankenship, was behind him and screamed at him when he saw the rattler.
"It looked fake," Deal said. "It was stretched out pretty and straight. Our family is always playing practical jokes on each other, and I thought it was a joke."
When the snake moved, he jumped.
"It jerked back, zig-zag like and looked like it was going to strike."
The chunky snake headed into the Folly as Deal hollered into the wind for people crabbing to get away. The snake glided across the creek, looking like a balloon floating on the water, Deal said.
A long-legged white bird drifted down to take a look, Deal said. The snake froze for a second, but continued to the other side. Deal waded in after it because people were on the other side.
"I really felt bad about killing it," he said, "but the way it was going, it was headed right toward a man and wife and three kids. It was headed to where all the people were."
The Eastern diamondback -- which National Geographic says is the largest venemous snake in North America -- has been pushed out by Hilton Head's development. But rattlesnakes were once so common here that all the out-of-towners wore knee-high snake boots as they hunted on exclusive preserves.
At one time, islanders caught so many rattlesnakes, Ross Allen, who founded Ross Allen's Reptile Institute at Silver Springs, Fla., would fly in, landing in Honey Horn Plantation fields, and milk the rattlers for their venom to be used for research and the production of antivenin.
Naturalist David Jones of Ridgeland caught a lot of rattlesnakes on the island before development got so intense. He said in a way they're like today's visitors.
"They really love the salt water," Jone said. "It's because they like to eat the marsh rabbits."
Rattlesnakes are prodigious swimmers. They've been seen swimming well offshore, and between barrier islands. Four summers ago, a rattlesnake swam ashore at Coligny Beach. A crowd of 150 stood back as Beaufort County sheriff's Sgt. Mike Moberly grabbed it barehanded and escorted it away.
Jones said the northeastern portion of Hilton Head is the most likely place for diamondbacks to succeed today.
"There might be hundreds of them," he said, "but they've got to have some privacy."
Jones sees snakes as things of beauty, and harbingers of the overall health of an ecosystem.
Deal said he, too, is comfortable with snakes. He collected them as a child, with the hognose being his favorite. That's the snake that will turn over on its back and play dead, or even throw up, as a defense mechanism.
Deal carefully took his prize back to the time-share units where his mother, three siblings and two more generations of family members -- 27 in all this year -- were staying.
A worker measured it to be 58 inches long, and lots of snapshots were taken. Some zeroed in on its six rattles. Deal hugged the young man who alerted him that he was about to step on a poisonous snake. "To me, Ethan is my hero," Deal said.
The snake will be stuffed and mounted.
http://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/story/6559524p-5837881c.html
Crabber uses net handle to kill rattlesnake that threatened island beachgoers

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