Right after I had dinner at work this evening, I decided to walk around our compound and get a little exercise. I had gone perhaps 1/3 of the way around the fenced-in area at the top of our mesa when I flicked the ember out of my cig. Not wanting to start a grass fire, I reached over and stepped on it, and immediately heard a buzzing noise.
I looked up and there, not six feet from me, was a rattlesnake coiled up and ready to strike (it was only about 2½ feet long). I decided to terminate my walkaround and return to the buildings. I met our nightshift super & told him about meeting the snake “right over there”. He and another worker decided to go chase it out of our compound. I decided to follow along & see if they needed any help. We walked back around to where I had last seen the snake, and they started trying to scare 'im off.
Surprise, surprise! Rattlesnakes don’t cotton to being run off. He advanced on us without fear. We backed away and the snake followed. I used to catch snakes when I was a kid, so I returned to the building to get a cane. (We have wooden canes, provided so if someone contacts a live circuit, you can hook them off without endangering yourself.)
When I returned, Supervisor was brandishing a traffic cone like a matador’s cape, trying to shoo the snake out of a cinderblock. I reached in with the cane and hooked the snake out. The snake was rather agitated at this point, and I am glad it was a small one, without much reach. Supervisor distracted the reptile while I hooked him closer and closer to the fence. By the time we got him to the fence, he had figured out that rearing up and striking wasn’t getting him anywhere, so he flattened himself to the ground. This made it harder to hook him with the cane, but we eventually got him to the fence. By this time, the snake was visibly tired, and decided that discretion was the wiser choice. He crawled into a bush on the other side of the fence, and we didn’t see him the rest of the evening.
So – how did things go at work for you?
~~Baloo
