TIMES-DISPATCH (Richmond, Virginia) 09 October 05 On mountain roads, some serpents slither among us (Rex Springston)
Afton: Nothing makes for a memorable weekend in the mountains like an encounter with a rattlesnake.
When my wife and I spotted the rattler in Shenandoah National Park last month, it was the third venomous snake we had seen in three days.
Talk about adding sparks to your marriage.
Two nights earlier, while we cruised the Blue Ridge Parkway, I caught something in my headlights that looked like a brown Frisbee in the road.
It was a coiled copperhead. The serpent may have been enjoying the still-warm pavement, or it may have been crossing the road when a car scared it into stopping. I'm a guy who moves turtles off roads, so why not a copperhead?
In the back of the car, I had a long, plastic "grabber" -- a pole with a trigger on one end and a claw on the other, for picking up trash. I grabbed the snake, which reacted with the ferocity of a roll of clay, and tossed it off the parkway.
The next night on the parkway, we saw another copperhead, but cars had turned it into a reptilian tortilla.
As dusk the following day, we were traveling on Skyline Drive in Shenandoah park when I spotted something long and dark oozing liquidly across the road. I pulled up about 20 feet away and checked.
I have hiked and camped in Virginia's mountains for more decades than I care to admit, but never before had I seen this legendary animal, the timber rattlesnake.
The timber rattler is a living piece of American history, the snake that inspired the "Don't Tread on Me" flag during the Revolutionary War.
Today, these animals are becoming history, dying out as people destroy their wild homes, hit them accidentally with cars and kill them on purpose.
Some people are surprised to learn we have rattlesnakes in Virginia. In addition to the timber rattler in the mountains, there is a cousin, the canebrake rattler, in the swamps of southeastern Virginia.
In the immediate Richmond area, our only venomous snake is the copperhead, a coppery-pinkish animal that inhabits woods and suburbs across Virginia.
We also have Eastern cottonmouths, or water moccasins, in the Colonial Heights-southern Chesterfield area and points southeast. The swimming serpents you see in the James River in Richmond are harmless Northern water snakes.
As for timber rattlers, Jack Redmond, a local amateur naturalist who knows more about snakes than Adam, said they are surprisingly docile. The rattlers' first reaction to a person, Redmond said, is to "hold real still and let you go by."
People work, hike and picnic throughout Virginia's mountains. When was the last time you heard of a rattler causing a problem?
"They're there," Redmond said. "People just don't see them, and it's probably just as well."
A copperhead bite is painful but rarely lethal. The rattler's bite is more dangerous. "It's like a .22 versus a shotgun," Redmond said.
I photographed my rattler from a distance. This time around, there would be no grabbing.
The snake was greenish-brown, with black bands. It was heavy-bodied, as rattlers are, and about 2˝ feet long.
The end of its body was black, which accounts for another of its names, the velvet-tail rattler.
Cowboy movies always show rattlers coiled and rattling, but that's not very accurate, said Joseph Mitchell, a University of Richmond reptile expert. They do that when disturbed or attacked.
A rattler doesn't want to strike at a person because we are much bigger, and the snake fears getting hurt, he said.
During forays into rattlesnake territory, Mitchell said, "I'm sure I've walked right next to them, and they chose to stay hidden."
Sure enough, the Skyline Drive snake got still and played you-don't-see-me. When that didn't work, it turned around, slid off the road and disappeared into the grass.
If you happen to come across a rattlesnake, enjoy it from a distance, Mitchell said.
"Whatever language you want to use -- a marvel of evolution, or a marvel of God's creation -- it's really a wonderful thing to see these incredible, beautiful animals. It's not often that one sees one of these things."
I suppose some people take comfort in knowing that rattlers are disappearing from Virginia.
Personally, I feel about rattlers the way I do about grizzly bears. No close encounters, please. But I like knowing there are still places in this increasingly tame world where wild things can live.
On mountain roads, some serpents slither among us