Rattlesnakes and other pets

I killed a baby rattlesnake on the hiking trail a few weeks ago. I stomped it to death, kicked the carcass to the side of the trail, and then continued on.

A lead paragraph with a hook. It has Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. The Why is not stated; it is implicit but obvious. Rather, it should be obvious, but it is not - at least in here in California. Many people do not understand why I killed the rattler. The baby rattler.

The rattler was born early – we have had a warm winter – and when I saw it motionless in the middle of the trail I crushed it without hesitation. A few years ago I waited too long before stomping a rattler and my adrenalin kicked in. I shook so much that I nearly missed the beast. A bad idea.

This one was almost a foot long, with a tiny red nubbin where its rattle was beginning to grow. It was the fourth one I’ve killed, I think. When I can kill a rattler, I do remorselessly. And without remorse.

I encountered my first one more than 25 years ago, while coaching my son’s soccer team. Eric and his teammates were 4 or 5 years old and easily distracted by just about anything. During the middle of practice they suddenly stopped and gathered in an excited circle looking at something on the ground. I chugged upfield and found them surrounding a small snake of some sort. Only eight or ten inches long, it had coiled its tiny body into a defensive striking position. Eric, ever fearless, bent over to get a closer look. The little snake instantly struck at him. It missed, thank G-d, and I immediately jumped on it with both size fourteens. I didn’t think a tiny snake could be very dangerous but I didn’t want to go through all the aggravation of filling out reports, etc, if it bit some poor kid. I didn’t want to face some frantic mom, either. Especially Eric’s mom.

It turned out that killing the snake was a very good idea: the bite of a baby rattler is far more dangerous than the bite of a full-grown adult. Some scientists claim that the youthful venom is more pure than the adult; others say that the combination of toxins within the venom is more deadly; no one knows for sure. I just know that if an adult rattler bites your leg, you can lose your leg. If a baby rattler bites you – anywhere - you can die.

Since then, I have seen rattlesnakes many times and if they were small enough I have stomped them. I found a two-footer (still small) in my yard once, but generally encounter them on hiking trails. Children use these trails, so killing the young rattlers is imperative: if the snake is in the wrong place and if it is small enough for me to kill safely, it is gone. If it is large enough to survive my boot landing on its head, I’ll leave it alone. I’m no Pat Tillman.

One night I told the story about the baby rattler I had killed a few weeks earlier and received an amazing range of reactions. Some people understood that killing a dangerous animal lurking by a popular trail is a necessary job; some people felt that I was remarkably brave (as if a four-ounce snake could bite through sturdy hiking boots); some thought I was a murderer.

“Why did you have to kill it?”

“Why couldn’t you find some way to move it off the hiking
trail?”

“Why couldn’t you just leave it alone?”

(And my favorite) “Why couldn’t you put up a sign to warn
the other hikers?”

I explained the problem again – that the baby was a rattler, not a puppy, that the venom from a young rattler could easily kill a child, and that I had left my magic marker and construction paper in my other backpack. However, one couple simply didn’t get it.

“Why didn’t you pick up a stick and push it to the side of the trail?”
”Because it could come back ten minutes later and bite someone’s kid.”

“Why couldn’t you pick it up with two sticks and carry it into the bushes?”

“Because if I dropped it, it might kill me. And I didn’t happen to have two sticks.”

“Why didn’t you just watch it until it crawled away on its own?”

“Because it might have slept in the sun for two days. Or until some little kid came along and decided to play with it.”

“Wasn’t there SOMETHING you could have done besides killing it?”

“Yes, I could have brought it to your house and let you decide what to do with it.”

Okay. I made that last one up. But you get the idea. People in California are crazy about animals. You can’t kill them no matter how much damage they do. You can eat animals if you buy the meat at Safeway after someone else has killed them, but if you kill them yourself, even in self defense, you are a murderer. Butchers are good guys; hunters are deranged killers.

Full disclosure: In general, I do not eat meat. I’ve been to slaughterhouses, I’ve seen how domestic animals spend their last few days and I will not associate myself with torture. Domesticated animals are treated barbarously so that we can have a barbeque. Sorry, I won’t join in. On the other hand, I eat meat brought down by ethical hunters. One minute the animal is standing in the forest, the next minute it is dead. It is ethical; it is nature’s way. (It is not ethical to stick the poor animal’s stuffed head on a wall, but that is another story.)

California's general revulsion to killing animals in public, as opposed to in secluded slaughterhouses, extends to ridiculous lengths. For example, it is very unpopular to shoot a California mountain lion even if one is sauntering down the street in a crowded neighborhood. I’m serious. Mountain lions roam the hills that cover the State and occasionally one ends up in someone’s yard. The cat will be confused when it first enters a populated area, and then quickly learn that it is a lot easier to stalk someone’s fat torpid beagle than it is to stalk a wary doe. So the lion will hang around until Animal Control comes to remove it by any means necessary.

And then the Animal Rights Lovers get agitated. Save the mountain lion! It was here before us!!! We are living on its territory!!!!! If it kills a few pets, that is the Law of Nature! Do you disagree? That’s speciesism!

Yes, the magnificent mountain lions were here before us and yes, we have criss-crossed their territory with roads and housing developments and parking lots and yes, we should try to protect them, but if one gets caught, say, up a tree in a shopping mall, it will have to be removed. Usually, this means killing it, which is a pity, but far superior to allowing it to run free and dine on a toddler. Mountain lions are important, but I prefer toddlers. Call me a speciesist.

Dear Reader, I am confident that you agree. However, a significant portion of Californians do NOT agree. Whenever a frightened Animal Control officer is forced to shoot some poor lost bear or mountain lion, strangely dressed flower children suddenly transport themselves from 1973 and somehow land in the middle of the controversy. Or more precisely, they create a controversy.

“Why couldn’t the officer sedate the animal?”

“Why couldn’t the officer shoot it with a tranquilizing dart?”

“Why couldn’t the officer just capture it in a cage and return it to the forest?”

“Why couldn’t the officer just follow it until it returned to the mountains?”

I’ve read countless newspaper articles that patiently explain why these ideas are at best impractical and very likely dangerous to animal control officers, who may be just a few yards from a frightened and confused predator with long canine teeth that could slice a human into deli meat before a tranquilizing dart could take effect. This doesn’t matter. The flower children (who tend to be pretty long in the tooth themselves) are not concerned for the welfare of the ranger. They care about the big pussy cat.

Two big pussy cats and one small cuddly brown bear were taken down on the San Francisco Peninsula during the last year or so. Some crazy woman has visited all three sites to offer up Indian prayers for the souls of the dead animals. She chants for hours (or at least until the TV crews come) and doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that she is a white woman who speaks only English, not a single Native American language.

If she were a solo crank she would just be funny, in part because when she chants she sounds a little like Gilbert Gottfried, but she has admirers. Lots of admirers. Masochistic admirers who are convinced that California hasn’t done enough lately to humiliate itself on the national stage. Hypocritical admirers who eat rare steak or raw sushi while asking how any hunter could kill an animal. Left-wing whacko admirers who would be horrified to know that someone was writing about them and comparing them to the Right-wing whackos who kept Terry Schiavo’s corpse alive for fifteen years. Lots of admirers.

Apparently some of her admirers are on the San Jose City Council, as it is more interested in protecting the lives of wild coyotes than the lives of children. I’m serious. About two miles from my house is a little gated community – The Villas of Almaden - with perhaps a hundred acres of undeveloped hills. The natural beauty is the main drawing card: the hills are full of wild oak stands, rock formations, and wildlife. Rabbits and squirrels hide in every corner, and there are twenty or so half-tame deer. The houses are small (1,500 – 2,300 square feet) and poorly constructed. However, this is Northern California. The Villas have the hills and the wild oak and the deer, and a kid in a uniform who sits in a guard house at a gate at the entrance, studying to become a toll collector or something while ignoring anyone who drives in, so the flimsy little houses are worth $1 - $3 million dollars, despite a little problem.

The problem is that a pack of coyotes has moved in along with Bambi and the bunny rabbits. The Villas of Almaden is an islet of undeveloped land completely surrounded by tract homes, miles from the nearest undeveloped area, but the coyotes apparently followed a dry stream bed down from the hills, crossed a few streets, followed a culvert, then jumped a fence to get inside. Now, they are eating whatever they can catch – rabbits and small pets are high on their list – and they have stalked children more than once.

The obvious solution is to hire a professional to trap and/or shoot them. Animals that hunt in packs do not belong in cute gated communities. Killing animals for sport is immoral, but protecting children and house pets from attacks by coyotes (or rattlers) is extremely moral. The solution seems extremely simple. Kill the varmints!

Obvious. But astonishing numbers of Californians disagree. The general opinion is that the coyotes were here first, we invaded their territory, and now we have to learn to live with them. When I point out that the Villas were built about 20 years before the coyotes settled in, and so the animals have invaded human territory, not vice versa, I am looked at as if I simply don’t get the big picture. When I ask people what to do about the occasional child who is stalked, the answer is some variation of “Parents have to protect their children.” When I respond that the best way to protect the children is to kill a few coyotes, I am looked at as if I am a mass murderer. Which I would be, if 15 coyotes roamed freely near my house and I owned a gun.

Needless to say, the people who live in the Almaden Villas have no illusions about the cute puppy dogs trotting around with their furry bunk buddies. They decided to hire a pro to trap or kill the coyotes humanely. However, discharging guns and setting traps are illegal within city limits. Even humane traps. The residents needed a permit from the City Council to take either action.

Again, this doesn’t seem controversial. Any 12-year old could see the logic. Unfortunately the San Jose City Council isn’t that smart. They heard the appeal from the homeowners, discussed it, and turned them down. They wanted time to study the issue, and they recommended that the homeowners use that time to educate themselves on how to make the environment “less attractive to coyotes”.

Speaking as a man who does not hunt, a high-powered rifle is the perfect way to make the environment less attractive to coyotes. However, no one on the Council asked me. That’s too bad, because had they asked I would have suggested that the Council members let their children stay in the Villas until the problem was resolved. At the very least, the homeowners could use a few CouncilKids as bait.

The Council’s action became a big local story, with heated debate on both sides. (As if to prove to the world that Californians don’t get it, the local newspaper ran a poll to see if people believed that leg traps should be used to capture the coyotes threatening the children. Out of 963 people who voted, 704 said NO!) http://forums.prospero.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=kr-mercurynews&msg=1042.1&ctx=0

In most cities, a community of multi-million dollar houses would have some political clout with the city council, but not in San Jose. In San Jose, it is hard to find a house that is not worth a million dollars. In San Jose, people casually spend $1 million to buy a shed unfit for cockroaches then tear it down and build a monstrous $3 million edifice that is just barely fit for cockroaches.

You may notice that I’m agitated. That is because my friends Fred and Gloria live in the Villas of Almaden and they have grandchildren. And apparently many Californians think a pack of wild coyotes is more valuable to the world than Fred’s grandchildren. And they also think that the welfare of a small stray rattlesnake is as important as the life of a child ambling down a nature trail. I think these people are Left-Wing idiots. Call me a speciesist. Please.