COULEE NEWS (West Salem, Wisconsin) 18 July 07 The myth of the rattle (Bob Lee)
At this time in my life I can no longer remember when I first heard “the rattle.” Nor do I remember whence it arose. Yet, arise it did — from beneath a rock ledge or from a place amid grass or low brush where the one that created the sound had presumed it was unseen.
I do know that the event did not occur along the La Crosse River Trail, for whenever and wherever it happened, I was very young, and there was no such trail.
My youth was spent among the eroded wreckage of an ancient plain that today is a jumble of coulees overlooked by a seemingly endless series of limestone capped ridges and knobs. Limy ledges jut from under the edges of this ruined plain. Huge slabs that match those broken edges can be found below them, scattered about on the steep slopes that residents of the area now refer to as “bluffs.”
It was here that I first heard “the rattle.” Its significance has always puzzled me.
This landscape amid which we live has to predate the most recent ice age. Significant amounts of the northern hard-rock landscape that the glaciers ground up can be found in the bottoms of our largest rivers. Almost certainly such debris was deposited there by the flood water that resulted as the glacial ice melted, filling a canyon known to be about 180 feet deep under the Mississippi River with sand and gravel.
Several different plant communities have grown over the area affected by the cold climate that accompanied the glacial age. A northern evergreen forest must have claimed it for a time, for there are still a few plant species reminiscent of that community living here.
Soil that appears to have been produced in a maple forest can also be found on land that was occupied by mid-western prairies when Europeans first arrived here. And, of course, there were the prairies and savannas that still existed during the 19th century.
Sometime during the gradual warm-up after the ice age, our neck of the woods became home to some new animal life, too. Among them were some really unique reptiles, apparently from the southwest, that inaugurated a whole new division of folklore. We call them rattlesnakes. The people who came here from Europe could barely accept these serpents that gave “warnings” before striking by “ringing bells” on their tails. “Incredible” had to be the word for it.
But let’s take this all the way, folks. Let’s include the non-venomous snakes: the fox snakes and the bull snakes that also “rattle” in their throats. Then, let’s explain the “warning.”
We exceed credulity if we even claim that rattlers rattle to warn us. We are not important enough to deserve a warning, nor do we threaten a rattler as much as a deer or a pig might. Deer have been known to trample rattlers to death, and pigs have been known to eat them. Snakes apparently have no ears; therefore, they probably hear nothing. Some folks believe that snakes can feel the vibrations of sound. If so, could the rattle be a form of identification?
This time I preserve the myth and leave you with a question along the trail.
The myth of the rattle

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