Snakes with Girls

Last night, my wife and I spent some time scanning in photos. Esther and Matthew got her a digital frame for her birthday, and she has been dying to get some of her photos onto the frame. As we looked through all her photos, I found two that were very interesting…

 

While we were in Cedar City, we found a little garden snake. Matthew wasn’t quite old enough to hold it… You can tell Elizabeth was happy to hold it and Esther wasn’t as certain she wanted to. Anyway, it shouldn’t seem very surprising that a little while ago, they found another snake in our neighborhood and immediately tried to pick it up. It seemed a little more aggressive, so they had someone else pick it up. They then brought it home. Here is the snake.

 

You might notice the diamond shaped head, and what looks like the beginnings of diamonds along the back. When Ann and I saw it, we thought it was a rattlesnake! It was very aggressive and was trying to bite anything (including sticks and pant legs) that came near it. We took it back to the creek and let it go, thinking that we were lucky our children hadn’t been bitten.

As I have gone back and looked at the pictures and compared to what was said online, it looks like we didn’t have a rattler at all, just simply an angry snake. If anyone knows for certain, by looking at the photo, please let me know. More than anything, just out of curiosity. I understand, now, that baby rattlesnakes still have rattles, just small ones. This one here didn’t, so I assume it wasn’t. That being said, at the time, Ann and I felt very lucky and have asked our kids not to pick up stray snakes, tarantulas, or any other animal without us being around. While I thought picking up squirrels, birds, etc, might need to be said, I didn’t expect to have to say it about what are traditionally scary animals.

Anyway, so now you know our story of a “baby rattlesnake.”