Sabre52
Cave Dweller 
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,496
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Post by Sabre52 on May 20, 2016 12:38:58 GMT -5
Scott: C. Ruber, one of the most docile rattlers I've ever encountered and man, when they first shed, they are really pretty. I've never seen a Grand Canyon Rattler C. abyssus. I think the fancy rattler I saw at Portal was C. viridis cerberus but was fancier than the others of that subspecies I've seen elsewhere. Ran into a gal studying spiny lizards there that told me the AZ ratters at that location are more strikingly marked than others in AZ or New Mexico. Oddly, the Black Tailed rattlers I saw a lot of one year at Woodward in W Texas, looked a lot more like the AZ ones from Portal than they did the one's in my books, which looked absolutely nothing like the Woodward rattlers...Mel
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gemfeller
Cave Dweller
Member since June 2011
Posts: 4,060 
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Post by gemfeller on May 20, 2016 12:41:26 GMT -5
I'm amazed at how effectively natural selection has resulted in so many different rattlesnake colors, each adapted specifically to its location. I've seen red-orange, black, green, gray and other colors in various Western locales. The sneakiest are the sage-green ones in parts of Idaho and Utah that tend to hide by draping themselves in the foliage of knee-hjigh sagebrush. I'm sure there are many other colors as well, depending on the environment.
I learned to levitate one evening without the steel pole and ground plate used by Indian Yogis. I was walking down from the top of a house-sized black basalt boulder near the Heise Caldera in S.E. Idaho and almost stepped on a coiled black rattler that wasn't rattling. Its color blended almost perfectly with the black rock. Somehow, in half-step, the sudden adrenalin burst supercharged the leg that was touching the ground and I floated effortlessly over the snake to safe footing. As Winston Churchill said: "There's no more exhilarating feeling than being shot at and missed."
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,496
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Post by Sabre52 on May 20, 2016 16:38:28 GMT -5
Boy Rick, you are sure right about rattlers and camo patterns. I've seen a Mojave Green hanging in a creosote bush that was really hard to spot and at Woodward, I dang near sat on a baby blacktail that looked exactly the same color and pattern as the rock he was sitting on. Nothing has camo better than a copperhead in leaves though. When I was at Fort Leonard Wood those dang things we under all the logs in leaves etc. Really hard to see them at all....Mel
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Intheswamp
Cave Dweller
Member since September 2015
Posts: 1,910
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Post by Intheswamp on May 20, 2016 19:20:01 GMT -5
Boy Rick, you are sure right about rattlers and camo patterns. I've seen a Mojave Green hanging in a creosote bush that was really hard to spot and at Woodward, I dang near sat on a baby blacktail that looked exactly the same color and pattern as the rock he was sitting on. Nothing has camo better than a copperhead in leaves though. When I was at Fort Leonard Wood those dang things we under all the logs in leaves etc. Really hard to see them at all....Mel x1000 |
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