I am a biologist thanks to childhood on a Texas dirt farm. Grandpa Gibson taught me to put worms on a hook, and what to do when the bobber splashed out of sight. Grandma fried the fish we caught. From him I picked up firearm safety and marksmanship, skills later honed as a Boy Scout and soldier. He failed to pass on finer points of milking—more got in my socks than the bucket—but during our walks I came to recognize the hammerings of red-headed woodpeckers, the high-pitched whistling bob-WHITE! of quail and clattering buzz of chaparral cocks (road runners).
As my fascination with reptiles took shape, he talked of the harmless huff-puffery of spreadin’ adders (hog-nosed snakes) plowed up in his fields, of coachwhips longer than he was tall that could thrash a person, and how Uncle Roy was bitten by a ground (pygmy) rattler. When I fearlessly picked up horned frogs (lizards) and dry-land terrapins (box turtles), my soft-spoken grandpa’s face lit up like I’d shown him something special. And as so often for those living close to the soil, Grandpa owned what anthropologists call local ecological knowledge—gained by working the land, passed on through cultural traditions.
Fast forward to 2019, when, after four decades at Berkeley and Cornell, I retired to my little chunk of the Hill Country in northeastern Mason County. I’d first encountered a venomous snake at age seven, at a camp for military brats on nearby Fort Hood and recall being impressed our counselors let that big Western Diamond-backed Rattlesnake just crawl on into a prickly pear patch. I’ve since studied snakes in twenty countries—grabbed an enormous anaconda by the tail in a Brazilian swamp and followed one Arizona black-tailed rattlesnake for twelve years (with a radio-transmitter). I discovered rattler moms protect their pups during their vulnerable first ten days or so, and that sometimes snakes swallow prey more than equaling their own weight. And as a proponent of scientists engaging with the public, I’ve given countless talks on how we might avoid problems with venomous serpents, perhaps even come to appreciate them. Now, back in the Hill Country – my favorite place on Earth – turns out there were still new things to learn about people and snakes.
I always started my talks by explaining that venom is a cocktail of tranquilizing and tenderizing chemicals, built for immobilizing and digesting food. Rattlesnakes also inject a tracker molecule, so prey can be trailed and eaten. For humans the problem is we terrify snakes, and if threatened they may bite. Sometimes they warn us, sometimes not, but if we’re bitten, even with treatment, the toxins can cause pain, disfigurement, and even death. Next, I’d explain that if bitten, one should remove rings and bracelets before swelling starts—but no cutting and sucking, no tourniquets or other dramatic first aid. Instead, calmly get to a hospital with doctors and antivenom. I’d emphasize death from snakebite is rare (averaging less than one per year in Texas), and many snakebites result in no permanent injury. It’s a problem we know how to fix.
Because my lectures stressed the low risk of snakebites, especially of deaths, I’d long puzzled over the intense hatred of serpents felt by some people, seemingly out of proportion to real dangers. Seemingly is the key word here, because I’d failed to appreciate the realities of daily living around rattlesnakes while distracted by the work at hand. I’d also insufficiently considered how rural attitudes reflect traditions long steeped in harsh realities, even after things change for the better. In fact, I’ve already met two Mason County residents who’ve suffered snakebites, more who’ve had pets bitten, and antivenom only became available in the 1930s, a decade after my mother was born.
There are scientific facts and then there’s art, which so often carries a deeper truth. I recently visited a nearby country cemetery, having already savored Lewis Waldon’s A dog called Friday & other true tales from Pontotoc. In terse but evocative prose—Hemingway without the macho swagger—Waldon wrote “A tall polished sandstone marker stands directly in front of me. It looks like a pillar covered in drapes with a tassel border. A four-sided square base but only two sides bear inscriptions. A five-year-old boy died the same day he was bitten by a rattlesnake. By his side lies the child’s father, only twenty-three years old, crushed beneath a falling horse.” Today lichens obscure both names, and I’m left pondering the fate of the wife and mother who isn’t buried there. Meanwhile, connecting snakebites to local history gets still more interesting, thanks to another gravestone with unexpected ties to Mason County.
As I wrote in a 2013 memoir, Tracks and Shadows: Field Biology as Art, “The little South Texas cemetery feels melancholic despite limpid blue skies, its somber mood reinforced by a windmill’s creaking dirge somewhere off in the thorn-scrub. I’ve come to check out a lichen-smudged tombstone, weathered by more than a century of sun, wind, and occasional rain, that reads ‘John D. Sweeten, born in Denton Co. Nov 14, 1862, was bitten by a snake July 16 in Atascosa Co., died in San Antonio July 24, 1880. Ecologist Larry Gilbert, who grew up near here and alerted me to the grave marker, reckons it was a two-day ride to the nearest doctor—where remedies might have included mind-numbing doses of whiskey, incision and suction, kerosene, and a fresh-killed chicken split over the wound. Unrelenting, excruciating pain was a given, gangrene likely, so the teenager’s death from the bite of a western diamond-backed rattler would have been traumatic for all concerned. No wonder keeping ranch yards well swept was all about scaring away six-foot buzz-tails, as was having vigilant pets and tolerating rattler-eating indigo snakes around houses and schools.”
As it happens, not quite eighteen-year-old Sweeten left behind a teenage wife in Mason, though other than brief mention in tax records I’ve learned nothing more of either of them. But those poignant grave markers drive home a reality, that even now, out on the land, venomous snakes are an ever-present risk. What to do about that? For starters, watch your step, pick up cover objects carefully. Don’t walk barefoot after dark, carry a flashlight. Boots and jeans help, chaps are excellent protection. As is best for any medical emergencies, several of which are more likely than snakebite, have an advance plan—where to go, how to get there. Beyond that, well, I’m inclined to show don’t tell, and I’m not going to shame anyone for killing rattlesnakes on their property.
On the other hand, in seventy-some years of spending as much time outdoors as possible, I’ve been charged by an elephant and shot at, but never suffered a snakebite. As folklorist J. Frank Dobie noted in a book about rattlesnakes, they are part of our Texas natural heritage, symbolic of wildness. And after all, we drive cars, operate heavy equipment, swim rivers, carry guns, and get stuck out in pastures during lightning storms, any of which could kill us—so we take appropriate precautions, hope for the best. I’m for giving our Western Diamondbacks a break, pausing to admire each one I encounter, and letting them crawl on by.
Our guest columnist, Harry Greene, is Adjunct Professor of Integrative Biology at UT Austin, and spends most of his time on Rancho Cascabel, south of Pontotoc. He’s happy to answer questions sent by email to [email protected]
