Jim Conrad's Naturalist Newsletter

Issued from Hacienda Chichen Resort adjoining Chichén Itzá Ruin in
YUCATÁN, MÉXICO

March 6, 2011

RATTLESNAKE Deep in the dry season curled, brown leaves littered the grove's floor as I wandered among trees not paying much attention to where I was going. Maybe a not-consciously noted movement on the forest floor alerted my woolgathering mind to the 2½-ft-long (76cm) snake laid out before me, one whose diamondback pattern beautifully camouflaged him in the dry-leaf mosaic. It was the Neotropical Rattlesnake, CROTALUS DURISSUS, a species occurring from northeastern Mexico south to Uruguay and Argentina, the distribution area being highly fragmented so that in some areas where you'd expect it, it's just not there. We were away from the main tourist area but close enough to be of concern. I made the five-minute hike to the hut to get a bucket with a lid on it to put the snake in, and when I returned he was still there, not far from where I'd left him. I held my walking stick before him to see how snappish he was, and he hardly seemed to notice. I passed the stick beneath his head, then farther back, until it was about midway beneath his body, lifted him up, and he behaved as if this happened to him every day. Gently I dropped him into the bucket, where he curled up, never once having shown fear or anger and never having rattled his rattles. Sometimes he looked around and once he flattened his head cobra-like, but that was his only hint that he noticed anything unusual happening to him. This mellow behavior is just like what I've experienced among Timber Rattlers back in Mississippi. You can see the snake curled inside the bucket at

via backyardnature.net