Hugh took these photos with his new iPhone. We saw the rattlesnake on our road on our way home from dinner one night, just a little bit off the main road and just under a quarter of a mile from our house. It was a BIG snake; sadly there's nothing in the photos to really give it scale (scale! ha! snake pun!). It was in front of Paul and Ann's property, though headed to the opposite side of the road from their place.
The grasses at the side of the road are thigh- to hip-height or so. I think the snake must have been at least 3 feet long...Hugh says maybe 4! If not 10! But really, probably between 3 and 4.
Its mouth is open in this picture. Rattlesnakes don't alarm me terribly (though they might if they started hanging around the house and grounds) but I am more bothered by the thought of coral snakes.I've been reading up on poisonous Texas snakes since seeing the rattler and am glad to report that in general, all are very shy and really don't want to run into you any more than you want to run into them. They will do what they can to get away from you and usually bite only as a last resort and in defense rather than aggressively. (I'm totally paraphrasing from Dixon's Texas Snakes: A Field Guide (UT Press), but I believe I am paraphrasing fairly accurately.)
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