Nonfiction

          "Goddamnit, Earl!” I blew out a frustrated breath and glared at the Northern Pacific rattlesnake in front of me. It wasn’t the first time I’d dealt with this one. He had quite the penchant for crossing the rural highway I patrolled every night, so I encountered him pretty regularly. I called him Earl, short for Erlenmeyer, because of a distinctive mark on his back that resembled an Erlenmeyer flask. There was something else distinctive about Earl —his temper. Most Northern Pacifics are placid creatures, rarely causing any drama during a rescue. Not Earl. Earl was a drama queen. It always took forever to get him picked up because he was squirrelly around the hook, running away, bluff striking, and just generally creating drama. Moreover, once released he wouldn’t just go on his way. He would sit where he was released and rattle. And rattle. And rattle. We could drive to the far end of our patrol area and come back, and if we stopped where we’d released Earl, we would hear him out there in the sage, still cussing us out.

          So here I was again, trying to corral Earl for long enough to get him on a hook. If you’ve never handled venomous snakes, getting a snake on a hook might sound disturbingly like fishing. It’s not like that at all. Here’s how it works (Do I need to tell you not to try this at home? Probably. Don’t try this at home.). First, I approach the snake from one side and slip a thick, smoothly polished hook under his front end. Lifting his front end up an inch or so gives me control over where his head goes without grabbing or pinching him. With the business end under control, I reach down with my free hand and take hold of the lower portion of his body, just forward of his tail. Now I can lift both ends at the same time so that he’s not dangling uncomfortably–no pressure points that could lead to injury and no risk to his delicate cervical vertebrae. And, while I’m able to guide his head, his front end is essentially unrestrained. My mentor, Dr. Dan Beck, likes to say that in order to hold any snake comfortably, you need to provide the same two things you would provide to a younger sibling-- support and guidance. Support as much of the body as you can, and gently guide the snake in the right direction, rather than forcibly restraining him. The hook-and-tail method that I use with rattlesnakes provides both of these factors while allowing for a measure of safety when dealing with a venomous species. Once settled on a hook, most snakes are so unconcerned about me that they will wrap their tails around my fingers as a safeguard against falling. When it’s time to release the snake, I set his front end down first and let him leave in his own time. It’s not uncommon for a rattlesnake to sit for a while, still holding on to my fingers with his tail before he moves off. Those moments are the best. There’s nothing quite like sitting in the desert under the stars, holding hands with a rattlesnake.

          Earl had no reason to fear the hook and, after multiple rescues, he should know this, but, as usual, he was having none of it. Every time I reached for him, he backed up, striking repeatedly to warn me off. I was running out of patience when my driver suddenly shouted, “Traffic!” in a panicked tone I’d never heard from him before. I spun to see a car barreling down on me, so fast and so close that I knew I would be killed if I stayed there with Earl for another second. So I did the only thing I could do. I snatched Earl up in my bare left hand and threw us both out of the path of the car.

          I tell people that it simply made sense–if I left Earl there, he would die. If Earl bit me, I would be injured, but I would not die. Absolutely logical. It’s a great justification but it’s also irrelevant, because the truth is, leaving Earl behind was never an option. It was both of us or neither of us. It never would have occurred to me to think otherwise.

          That speeding car never slowed or swerved to avoid hitting me, which raises disturbing questions about human nature; but, those are questions best left for another day. Earl, on the other hand, was an angel. He didn’t bite, or rattle, or struggle. He might be a drama queen but when it really mattered, he had my back. Even after the car had blown past us, he sat calmly in my hands while I slipped the hook under him. Then we walked together out into the sage and sat on the side of a small, dusty rise under the desert sky.