Birds Looking Down

The first thing I want to emphasize is that this is not a blog intended to shock, frighten, or disgust anyone. It’s a fact of nature and it can be a good thing to know about to adjust to something people have done to nature.

And the next time you go for a burger, I want you to think about everything that happened before they handed that thing to you.

Roxy and I live in the countryside, next to a pasture. We have heard a mother cow calling to her lost calf after the calf is hauled off in a truck. Roxy was a lab chemist who would visit meat processing plants as part of her job. They say you should never know how sausage is made. Roxy knows. In the news today, there is a segment about a meat processing company that will have to recall 10 Million Pounds of meat from stores due to Listeria contamination.

Just think about it.

Our house is surrounded by wild and undeveloped land. And there are rattlesnakes, along with a lot of other wild creatures, out there all the time. On one occasion, I was able to stand on a rock and see three different rattlesnakes at one time.

When we moved here, we simply learned how to co-exist with all of them. We have never felt threatened or afraid of anything … well … except for the scorpions. We catch them in a glass and release them out away from the house. The scorpions around here can’t kill you, but the sting is really unpleasant.

The first thing to know is that, with just a little bit of caution, rattlesnakes aren’t a threat at all. The rattlesnake feels more threatened by you than you should be by the snake. Once you see the snake and know where it is, it’s no threat at all as long as you just stay a few feet away. Dogs and children are a different matter. You wouldn’t let your child play on a highway. Don’t let the child play where there might be a rattlesnake either.

Rattlesnakes aren’t like other snakes because they have thick, slow bodies and they seldom move very fast. They know that you’re not something they can eat and, if they possibly can, they move away from you. The people who get bitten by a rattlesnake are messing with them. Don’t mess with them. Then you’ll be OK.

In my direct observation, I’ve seen more birds caught by a rattlesnake than anything else. And, take it from me, there are more mice, chipmunks, and squirrels around our house than birds. I don’t know why rattlesnakes seem to catch more birds. It seems like a bird would be harder to catch.

When the birds see a rattlesnake, a whole flock gathers to watch it. It’s like a train wreck for birds. They can’t stay away. The snake is usually just there not really doing anything. We’ve learned to notice “Birds Looking Down” and I often go out an verify it. It’s like I wrote earlier, all you have to do is stay a few feet away and the snake is harmless.

In the twenty years we have lived here, I think I have noticed a change in rattlesnakes I see. They don’t rattle now. Their reward for warning you is that they are killed. That can really boost the speed of evolution. But we have learned that “Birds Looking Down” is another way to notice that there might be a rattlesnake there.

And none of them get killed around our house.