Letter From America.(living with rattlesnakes)(Letter to the Editor)

When my husband and I bought property in the upstate New York village that, for privacy's sake, I call Bluestone, we didn't sweat the rattlers. It was no secret that our corner of the world is home to timber rattlesnakes, but we were too concerned with closing costs and mortgages to worry about poisonous reptiles. The fellow who found us our house carried a long, forked object that he provocatively called his snake stick, but I chose to assume that the serpents he'd be flicking aside as we strolled would be the garden variety.

Soon after we became Bluestoners, our education in rattlesnakes began. The snake-stick gent, whom I'll call Mr. Shivers, regaled us with stories about his friend, Jack, who used to make a living "milking" rattlers for pharmaceutical companies. "He'd catch 'em along by the tracks right here," Shivers drawled, pointing just beyond our house. "Grab them behind the head." He made a decisive grabbing gesture ending in a sharp pinch, then bugged out his walleye to signal astonishment: "Catch the venom in a jar!" He drew out the word "Jaaaar" for folkloric emphasis. Once, Shivers told us, a rattler spat venom in Jack's eye. "Turned the eyeball dead white. Thought he'd gone stone blind!" And here Shivers delivered a long suspenseful blink.

The point of these tales, to me, was that our rattlers were an optional peril. You had to practically beg them to attack you. Naturalists describing them use the word "shy"; you don't bother them, they won't bother you. "You don't want to step on one, though," such people always add with a smile. That's because the bite, while seldom fatal to healthy adults, can kill a child.

Timber rattlers winter in dens up in the mountains behind us. As the summer grows hot and dry, locals say, "they come down looking for water," mercifully ridding the area of excess rodents as they go. Because they're useful, ...