During my 40 years in central Virginia, I learned to respect snakes. So hard to see in the brushy mountains of Virginia, and copperheads like to hang out together at some times of year. Most dramatic meeting of snake & family occurred when my two kids & I were picking blackberries in a big patch near the trail at Loft Mountain. Suddenly a sound that I thought was one of the kids spraying tick repellent! But my eleven-year-old son, close to the hidden rattler, knew better and froze, then backed slowly back to the trail. All three of us then climbed a stout tree with heavy low branches to try to get a safe look at the rattler. Soon that huge snake slowly moved through a little clearing under us -- five feet long rattler and very heavy! When I mentioned the rattler's size to my adult hiking group a few years later as we were hiking past the same spot on Loft mountain trail, they all scoffed at me. My moment came when a few hundred yards later, the group froze on seeing a four-foot rattler gliding slowly across the trail, not as big as the one my family had met, but pretty hefty. In Oklahoma City during a neighborhood "clean-up" weekend, I lifted a garbage can lid that someone had left beside the road -- rattler! Jumping back was automatic! Never joined neighborhood clean-ups after that, ha-ha. When living in southern Arizona, my family met sidewinders and other rattlers in the arroyos, the sandy path to our daughter's school, and tucked motionless staring back at us from old tree stumps, and we made sure never to put our hands or feet where our eyes hadn't scanned. I was just now surprised to hear on this thread that poisonous snakes have made it as far north as New Hampshire! I have no desire to kill snakes, and my Dad killed only one in Virginia when we were kids, a copperhead in low brush right beside an ocean beach where many kids ran and played. Here in CA, I know the rattlers are around but haven't seen any. Andi
