Surprise !!!

It was an evening in mid-June, warm but not hot, I’d gone out to take down the bird feeders – we do that each evening to avoid having the neighborhood black bears do it for us.

Going along the front walk I was brought up short by a yellow-phase timber rattlesnake basking in the light of the setting sun against the base of the front stoop. Having worked in rattlesnake territory for well over 50 years, I’ve never been afraid of timber rattlesnakes but respect them and have also developed an automatic reaction to stop whenever one is in my field of view even if I hadn't realized it was there – no thought necessary, it’s an automatic reaction.

We’ve lived here on the side of this ridge for 51 years and, although we regularly see garter snakes on the lawn or in the flower gardens –

We’ve never seen a rattlesnake here – nor heard that any neighbors have encountered one.

I saw the snake, the snake saw me; it moved its head slightly backward and I backed up. OK, what to do now? We wouldn’t want a rattlesnake around the house but rattlesnakes are a species of concern in Pennsylvania and in any case I really didn’t want to kill it.

To the garage I went to get one of my snake sticks and a five-gallon pail, then back to get the snake which hadn't moved. Timber rattlesnakes are quite docile; using the snake stick I got it into the pail – which was much too shallow to contain the 3½ - 4 foot long snake, so out it came and quickly crawled into the dense flower planting.

I called H and she brought our steel garbage can. By that time the snake had emerged from the planting onto the lawn in an effort to flee and I used the stick to get it in the steel can – on went the lid. Unfortunately, I didn't take photos although in retrospect I very much wish I’d taken a photograph of the snake against the stoop.

Now what???? Nope, I wasn’t about to kill the snake nor take it back up the ridge to possibly return again. So, in the car went the can with the snake and the two of us and off we went to release the snake in suitable habitat far from dwellings. By the time we got to the release site the sun was slipping below the horizon and it was quite dark in the woods.

At a spot where an old timber sale road left a forest road the can came out of the car, the lid came off and the snake came out. As soon as the snake hit the ground it headed for thick cover –

Once there it coiled in a defensive position –

Through all of this the snake never coiled until it got into the thick cover, and never once made any attempt to strike. As I said, they're quite docile and they ain't out to get ya.

We wished it well and headed for home.

Timber rattlesnakes have two color phases with many gradations in between: yellow like the one we had just released –

And black -

This was a fairly young snake but quite large, still growing as indicated by its tapered rattles (a new segment is added at each shedding, perhaps three or four a year). Timber rattlesnakes usually become mature when they're five to ten years old, males earlier than females.

As compared to an older snake with rattles of uniform width, indicating it's completed its growth, and the tapered segments have been lost –

Timber rattlesnakes use dens below frost level during the winter, typically a number of snakes den together in a site they use winter after winter. The dens usually don't look like the rocky open areas that most people call snake dens, those places are basking areas. The den entrances often resemble a chipmunk hole in the woods, usually within a few hundred yards of a basking area.  

Male timber rattlesnakes may travel a couple of miles from their dens, females not as far; I didn't check to see if the snake by the stoop was male or female. Where was it's den, where are the others from that den, how long was the snake around the house? We'll never know.

We released the snake, hopefully it will survive in its new home and not try to return – in which case it may succumb to predation, or a malicious human, or a vehicle as it crosses a road, or the cold of winter if it can’t find a den below frost line.