The insect buzzing behind me as I squatted on the ground sounded like it was imprisoned in a jar. Setting my basket of freshly plucked chanterelles down, I hastened to latch the bottom of the gate. When I stood up, I turned, hoping to spot what I expected to be a large bug. What I spotted instead didn’t have six legs, in fact, didn’t have legs at all, and it was coiled maybe eight feet away in the leaves under a cluster of trees between the woods and the pasture.
It was the first timber rattlesnake I have ever spotted on our farm in all these 21 years. I stared at it for a minute, then slowly backed away. And as I later joked, I’m still backing.
The rattle sound is unique. Not loud like a lifetime of TV and movie westerns led me to believe. It is distinctly consistent — some say it’s more like a cicada’s rasp than a maraca’s rattle — and once heard, remembered.
The timber rattlesnake is found in all counties of Tennessee and is endangered from loss of habitat. Killing rattlers, or any other native snake in the state, is illegal barring “genuine threat.” As the rattler is reported to be a poor candidate for relocation, the preservation emphasis has been on maintaining existing habitat and preserving in situ populations.
My initial response was more curiosity than alarm. Yet reports of bites by this species are rare, usually the result of someone trying to get up close and personal. Rattlesnakes fulfill an important niche in the ecology of the woodlands. And I will take it as a feather in the cap of this region’s rich diversity that the rattler is found among our pastures and forests.
I walked back to the house — past the small ravine where a beautiful red fox with a magnificent plume of a tail ventures forth for the occasional raid on the hens; under the rainy skies, where on clearer days Cooper’s and red-tailed hawks soar, seeking the same diet— thinking about place and ownership. It is not our prerogative, as Mr. Berry says, to “make war against the world and its wild appetites.” The responsibility is on us to secure our lands with good fencing and vigilance, to lock up our livestock at night, to listen for the rattle, as it were, before resorting to our lethal ways.
In the evening, over a dinner of a chanterelle alfredo, we discussed the snake sighting. One of us felt that along with the advent of tick season, she had just one more reason not to venture out for a stroll in the woods. I took another bite of the pasta and decided that a good pair of boots and a careful ear were a sufficient protective measure. Indeed, yesterday a friend and I passed through the same gate, roamed the same woods, and returned with another fine harvest of wild mushrooms but no sightings of our rattling friend, which was both good and disappointing.
