TIMES RECORD NEWS (Wichita Falls, Texas) 27 October 07 Watch your step - As weather cools, rattler movement heats up (Lara K. Richards)
Furl Rattlesnakes are on the move.
The recent burst of fall weather has rattlers slithering around the countryside, scoping out their dens.
“As the weather cools, it’s a common time for the snakes to become active,” said Miles Dabovich, Wichita County agriculture extension agent. “Snakes like cool weather. It is the time of the year they are moving, and people that are out, they need to be careful.”
Dabovich said snakes will be very active until the weather gets cold enough to send them burrowing down for winter.
And this means that anyone venturing outside needs to look – and listen – for the unofficial mascot of North Texas.
The good thing about rattlers, though, Dabovich joked, is that you know one when you find it.
“One thing about a rattlesnake, they are pretty good about giving you a warning before you get to them,” he said.
This year could be an especially big season for snakes in general, given the amount of rainfall the area has received, said Dr. David Greer of Henrietta, who has become an unofficial snake expert after studying snakes and treating snakebites for the past 37 years.
“I don’t want to try to predict the future too much, but we’ve had a really bountiful year as far as vegetation and that has increased the number of animals. It will increase one of snakes’ staples, which is mice. I predict they’ll be more snakes this year.”
Not only does the increased vegetation mean more food for snakes’ prey, but it also makes it harder to spot snakes, Greer added.
So far, rattlesnake sightings don’t seem to have changed much from year’s past, according to two area state parks.
“I’m not telling you they’re not here, but me personally, I have not seen a live rattlesnake in probably two months,” said Lynn Salmon, park manager at Lake Arrowhead State Park. “I haven’t seen as many as I normally see, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary.”
Salmon said one common spot to see snakes this time of year is on the pavement.
“Especially in the evening, that’s where you are going to see them because they are getting the heat off the road,” he said. “They are cold-blooded animals and they like the heat.”
David Turner, park manager at Copper Breaks State Park, said rattlesnake sightings have been few up to this point.
One thing that has alarmed him this year, though, is the death of other snakes at the park, which he attributes to a case of mistaken identify.
“We’ve had eight dead bull snakes this year. That’s way too many for me because that could lead to a rattlesnake problem,” Turner said. “If you have a bull or a king, those are slow-moving snakes. They (visitors) think they are doing you a favor when you run one over. If people keep hammering the bulls and the kings, then we will have trouble with rattlesnakes.”
The problem stems from lack of education about snakes, Salmon added. Not every snake out in North Texas is a rattler.
“A lot of people, if they see a snake, it’s a rattlesnake, no matter what kind of snake it is,” he said.
The problem, Turner said, is the simple fear factor associated with snakes, which leads people to panic and act before they think.
“People see all snakes as bad,” he said. “Not every single snake people see is bad or going to kill them. The big problem we’ve had in the past is them panicking because they saw a snake. We try to do some educational stuff periodically to let people know what they are looking at.”
Copper Breaks has a very healthy reptile population, including snakes of all kids to turtles, lizards and the like. From ribbon snakes to garden snakes, snakes perform a vital function out in the wild.
Even rattlers perform an important service at the park, Turner said.
“I have a good amount of admiration for them because they take care of rats, mice and other things,” he said.
Some adventurous visitors may try to pick up snakes they see at the park, but Turner strongly advises against it.
“If you don’t know your snakes, keep them at a distance. Don’t go pick them up. You don’t want to do that anymore than you go pick up a bobcat,” he said.
Although the park hasn’t had many reports of snakes, Turner said Copper Breaks’ staff are always on the lookout.
“When we do have nighttime events, we check out the area and patrol, especially with an evening event because when snakes like to move is dusk and dawn,” he said. “If you see a snake, contact us and let us take care of it. We are trained for this.”
Sometimes, people have a hard time distinguishing a rattler from other kinds of similar-looking snakes.
But there’s also lots of general misinformation about rattlesnakes slithering through people’s minds as well, Greer said.
There’s lots of what he calls “old wives’ tales” about this particular brand of reptile.
“They have to rattle before they bite,” he said, ticking off one of the myths. “That’s untrue.”
Another misconception is that the smallest snakes are the worst one to be bitten by.
Untrue again, he said.
“The general rule of thumb, the larger the snake, the more venom they carry and the worse they bite,” he said.
The male snake is more venomous than the female. Whether a snake has recently eaten also affects the power of the venom, he said.
“In the warmer weather, the venom is a little more toxic, but I don’t exactly know why,” he said.
Another myth: that snakes get more aggressive in cold weather.
“They’re hard to move at all. If it’s real cold, they might not bite at all,” he said.
Greer’s knowledge of snakes developed as a byproduct of his job as a rural doctor.
“It goes with the territory,” he said. “I’ve just seen them over the years and just got interested. I did some study on their habit to try to be able to treat them a little more objectively and with a little more knowledge.”
One thing Greer is thankful for is developments with anti-venom. In the past, the anti-venom could cause many harmful adverse side effects, he said.
“It was called serum sickness, and people could get whelps and hives and sometimes have trouble breathing, then anaphylaxis and then they can go into shock,” he said. “I’ve seen an individual die from the treatment, not the bite, and when you see that, it leaves an impression on you. Do you take the risk of the treatment or the bite?”
Greer has seen his share of bites, but has noticed one increasing trend about recent victims.
In his decades of treating snakebites, Greer said he’s witnessed more hunters coming through the emergency room.
“One of the things I have had that we’ve seen is the hunters, the dove hunters, at this time and later on the quail hunters that they will shoot a bird, they go to get the bird and they get bit,” he said.
“Almost all of the snakebites that we see are accidental from a standpoint that you walk up on one and the snake bites it as a matter of protection or just reflex,” Greer said. “Rattlesnakes, they are not usually aggressive. They don’t chase a person down or animal down.”
When snakes do bite, there’s a little confusion among experts about what is the best method possible for the immediate course of action for treating it.
Turner said there’s a lot of conflicting information about how to proceed.
“You can look at any first aid book and they’ll say five different things,” he said. “One year, it’s suck it (the poison) out. One year it’s not. There’s kits you can draw the poison out. Put ice on them,” he said. “The best thing you can use is a set of car keys. Get them to town.”
Greer, who said he’ll normally see five to six snakebites a year, agrees that the old idea of cutting a wound and sucking the poison out might not be the best method.
What he recommends instead is to carry an ice pack and common sense.
“Have one of those chemical ice packs, one of the kinds you can crush,” he said. “Put it on the wound and have a rubber band wrapped around it, a rubber band above and below the snake bite. The rubber band helps reduce the flow of poison into the vessels. You don’t freeze the tissue, you just cool it down to slow the circulation down.”
Then get in your car and go seek professional help, he stressed.
“And then go to the nearest emergency room,” he said. “You don’t cut them open anymore. The amount of time people would spend doing this is time wasted and the quicker you can get in to a medical facility, then the better it is.”
It’s not just the venom, after all, that can cause problems. The bite itself can become infected.
“In addition to the poison is that these are dirty wound and they need to be cleaned and treated because of that,” he said.
As weather cools, rattler movement heats up

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