As if Angelenos didn’t have enough to worry about as above-normal temperatures and tinder-dry landscapes produce extreme fire danger, experts on Tuesday warned that the warm weather has led to greater exposure to rattlesnakes.
The reasons are twofold: the combination of heavier rains several years ago and prolonged periods of warmer-than-usual weather could lead to greater numbers of the venomous snakes, while at the same time, hot, drought-like conditions are drawing them out of hibernation earlier than usual, experts said.
Already, the effects are being felt.
The state has recorded 84 venomizations this year compared with 82 for all of 2013, officials said.
“If you see a rattlesnake, don’t try to pick it up, don’t try to move it somewhere else, don’t try to do something heroic with the snake,” said Cyrus Rangan, assistant medical director for the California Poison Control System. “Don’t even get close to take a picture either because when you get too close to a snake, that’s when they think about biting you.”
The L.A. Basin is home to multiple species of snakes with the Southern Pacific Rattlesnake the most common, said Ian Recchio, curator of reptiles and amphibians at the Los Angeles Zoo, where officials held a news conference Tuesday.
Recchio said the Southern Pacific is one of the most venomous rattlesnakes.
Rattlesnakes are shy creatures that rattle as a defensive warning, and officials said the public would do well to heed the sound.
Plenty of snakes here in Oz but rarely encountered them in the wild. Main rule is make a bit of noise (vibration) moving through potentially snaky areas and if you see one, stop and leave it be – let it escape which is what it will want to do. They are scared of us, we aren’t their prey and they don’t want to waste venom on us if they can avoid it.
Give em space and respect and y’all be fine.
Snakes are generally good creatures which deserve our admiration and not being stupid or hysterical about.
like sharks.
So, yes, I welcome our reptilian fanged overlords of the herpetological variety too! 😉
Reblogged this on uknowispeaksense.
‘Don’t pick up a rattlesnake’, ‘don’t get close to get a picture either’
People are strange.
What’s next . . . Velociraptors?
No, this is about ‘more of the same’. Spiders, perhaps? And the all time favorites, the jellyfish.
Jellyfish is one of your all time favorites??
How excellent. Spend some time swimming with them, please.
Some of the comments here sound like Tillerson with “we can adapt to that” things like “let it escape” and “they’re afraid of us”. They’re missing the point of this post, which is that climate change is causing snakes to alter their behaviors and have more interactions with humans.
I think back to a severe drought many years back in the mountains of NJ that caused the snakes to move down into the lowlands. Some folks had dozens of rattlesnakes and copperheads camping out on their property—-under the bushes and sunning themselves on decks and driveways. A few people and many more pets got bitten and for a while there was a bit of hysteria as people shot them and hacked them up—-the state police were even doing courtesy “snake executions”. Cooler heads prevailed and people got “snake smarter” until the drought broke and the snakes went home.
PS Not all snakes want to escape and not all rattlesnakes give warnings. I have seen many that will defend their territory and make YOU retreat. I was chased out of a trout stream once by a big water snake that came after me a la Jimmy Carter’s rabbit and saw a large copperhead refuse to get out of a narrow trail along the Potomac River when hikers approached. That snake had 8 or 10 people wondering what to do until a little female kayacker in a hurry to get to the water scooped it up with her paddle and flipped it like a pancake 20 feet into the bushes.
My advice is to move slowly in snake country and keep your eyeballs busy. I have encountered rattlers in the Rockies who DID get out of my way but gave no warning, and others sunning themselves in groups on flat rocks who were not going to move for anybody. See them before they see you.
I live in Los Angles; actually the valley. I hike about once a week at Topanga State Park and on occasion I’ll go to Santa Anita Canyon in the Angeles National Forest. I’ve had countless Pacific Rattlesnake encounters over the years. The only time I’ve had one rattle at me was when i was marching hastily down the trail because i didn’t pack any food and my blood sugar felt like it was getting low, and the snake was in the middle of the trail, unimpressed with my aggressive velocity toward it. It was a big, fat one – like the one in the picture. I didn’t even notice it until it started to rattle. Then i stopped and backed up. The trail i was on was a thin, one-man-wide deal, and the chaparral was so thick that there was no way to get around the trail. The snake wouldn’t leave the trail, so i had to walk all the way back up the mountain and use an alternate route.
There’s been another time where one has been on the trail and didn’t want to move, even after i’d tossed a few pebbles at it to encourage it, so i ran around it through a sharp thistle patch on the side of the trail, putting a good 6 feet between it and i.
Oh, and there was another time where i was motoring down a path and one plopped down in front of me from a cliff-like wall on the left side of a trail that was switching back and forth to accommodate a sudden change in altitude in that part of the trail/forest. I backed up and pulled out the camera, but by the time i had the thing up-and-running, it was halfway off the trail. Now that i think about it, that one did rattle at me too because i (again) threw a few pebbles at it to encourage it to move off the trail completely.
Every time i walk through one of the wild grass fields with shorts on in the summer, i think to myself, ‘This is stupid, this is stupid, this is stupid….’. Ain’t usually anybody around to help you in Topanga either: you might see 1 to 10 people all day on 36 miles worth of trails, and zero if the heat is 95F+.
I’ve gotten a good picture of a coyote that was sizing me up too. He was as big as a German Sheppard. At dusk the coyotes start getting crazy – a big pack will sound like a college frat party or a bunch of children yelling at each other and crying. It does sound eerily human from a ways away. I’ve been out there at night time and have had to walk 2 miles in the dark. The eyes that reflect in your flashlight beam are mostly those of mule dear, but still a bit frightening.
Oh, and I have a good picture of a red shouldered hawk sitting on a tree branch with a snake in its beak.
Below is a link to my favorite snakebite story. The incident took place not far from where I live, and was all over the local news when it happened (I remember it well).
Basically, get a couple of drunk guys and a rattlesnake together, and if the conversation starts out something like this, you know that things aren’t going to end well:
“I’ll bet you couldn’t kiss that snake.”
“I’ll bet you that I could.”
http://darwinawards.com/stupid/stupid1999-10.html
Great story, and typical of the Darwin Award contestants.
I’m really responding to ask about your “handle”. It looks like the coordinates of a galaxy that is “….far far away”—-what gives?
also
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/serpent-handling-pastor-profiled-earlier-in-washington-post-dies-from-rattlesnake-bite/2012/05/29/gJQAJef5zU_story.html
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/16/us/snake-salvation-pastor-bite/
So much for the inerrancy of the bible. It’s a shame that people have to die to find out it’s not true. The WV guy watched his father die of a snakebite under similar circumstances 25 years ago—-I wonder if he has any kids who watched him die and plan to handle snakes—-quite a family ‘tradition” they’re establishing, and it would make the Guinness Book if it happened to three generations (although I would bet that the two in a row is already some sort of record). (And guess what political color WV is and what’s their favorite energy source?)
Side effect of climate change – or almost any other change, really – people get into unfamiliar situations and react wrongly.
However there are so many variations on the “don’t get close to wildlife to take photos” warnings, in just about any climate zone, that really the only explanation for those sort of accidents is an unrealistic belief in luck or a willful disregard of fairly obvious dangers of wildlife.
Wildlife. It’s in the name – “wild”. Use a bit of sense and keep some distance.
Ah, just wear boots, and learn the difference between a grasshopper sound and a rattle, you’ll be fine…
Well, OK, you also have to be listening and watching a little… in other words not walking in a daze. But that’s 84 bites in the ENTIRE STATE. That’s really low, actually, especially considering how big and populated CA is.
That’s 84 bites this year as opposed to 82 for the entire of 2014. Any one of these is potentially a fatality, so what looks to be a doubling of bite frequency is of concern even if the numbers are low
And there’s a lot of variance among rattlesnake species in the readiness of the snake to strike, and in the toxicity of its venom. Watching the ground, wearing boots, never putting your hands in a place you can’t scan visually first – all good. But the chances of an increase in morbidity are still worth taking seriously.
Something nobody else seems to have mentioned is that this has a deleterious effect on rattlesnake populations as well. They don’t fare well with increased human-snake interactions.
I’m going to guess that the increase in encounters is related to an increase in populations, actually that’s what the article said. And, of course, it’s about climate change making it possible for a longer breeding season.
But yes, you should take snakes seriously, but that doesn’t mean the natural world is a big bad place you shouldn’t go. I think the dangers can be overstressed, which seems to be happening here. I’ve lived all my life in snake country and have never been bitten, and neither have most of my friends and family. Most, I said. It happens. But my relatives who HAVE been bitten survived, because they knew how to get the venom out quickly, and to be honest if you get bitten multiple times your body starts to build immunity to it (to a degree).
To put it into perspective, how many people died in car accidents last year in California alone? How many died from snake bites?