Rattlesnake sightings aren’t more common, but word on social media is
A friend reports an encounter with a rattlesnake on a leisurely walk at Pattridge Open Space Park near the hogback in Arvada. Two days later, a woman gets spooked by a rattler on the Apex Trail at Lookout Mountain. She reports it on her neighborhood-based social media network, and another woman comments that she has seen rattlers the last five times she ran the trails at Matthews/ Winters Park near Red Rocks.
That made us wonder: Are rattlesnake encounters more frequent than usual this summer? We took that question
and many more to Mary Ann Bonnell, visitor services manager for Jefferson County Open Space, who has been researching rattlesnakes since 2000.
This is normal. Many of our parks are in hogback country and people love recreating in hogback country because it’s just gorgeous. That puts us right where rattlesnakes want to be.
I was leading a bird walk (Monday) night at South Valley Park (near Ken Caryl). Two trail runners came past us and said, “Hey, we just saw a rattlesnake on the trail.” It was about 8 o’clock in the evening. The temperatures were starting to get cool. That’s when a rattlesnake is going to want to get out onto a warm trail and borrow some of that heat from the trail to stay warm so it can go out and hunt in the evening, because it’s been too warm during the day.
I think what we’re seeing is, because of social media, people have a greater opportunity to share the fact that they’ve seen a rattlesnake more widely. That gives us the impression that there are more sightings, but this is really pretty much normal. If you’re hiking and recreating in the hogback country, you have a very good chance of seeing a rattlesnake.
Those hogback ridges, if you’re a rattlesnake, are just the best habitat you could possibly imagine. If you are a rattlesnake, what you’re looking for is a place to have winter cover and have cover from the sun (in the summer) because it can’t be out in the hot sun with this temperature. It needs to have a place to hide, and it needs to find food. Those rocks offer an amazing array of places for a rattlesnake to either get cooled off or warmed up and find a meal.
Yes. We took the ground temperature Sunday when we were doing a rescue for a dog that got overheated and the trail surface temperature was 125 degrees. A snake cannot handle that. That’s a lethal temperature for them. They can’t sweat, they can’t shiver, they don’t do things humans do to maintain constant body temperature. When it is extremely warm, they seek thermal cover — under a rock, under some brush, tucked away under a slab of concrete.
My group (Monday) night, one of the people commented, “Wow, it feels like it just got 15 degrees cooler.” That was when somebody said, “Hey, we just saw a rattlesnake.”
Apex Park, Deer Creek Canyon Park, South Valley Park, the Ken Caryl Valley, North Table Mountain and South Table Mountain. Another place we see rattlesnakes is Clear Creek Canyon. You’ve got those beautiful rock formations, huge rock slabs, wall faces, and we do see rattlesnakes because that again offers that wonderful suite of things — warm rock, rock to hide under, food — and that’s where you’re going to find rattlesnakes.
The urbanized areas are the places where it’s not good rattlesnake habitat, but as you leave town in any direction, you’re going to find good rattlesnake habitat, whether it’s hogbacks or prairie dog burrows.
We did some research last year and came across some interesting statistics. Our data set was about 400 people. We asked how many of them had seen a snake as they had been recreating in an openspace park, and 74 percent of the people said they had seen a rattlesnake in the last two years. But only four percent of them said they had experienced any sort of conflict. We defined that as, “Was your dog bitten or were you bitten?” That tells us many, many people see snakes — some of them reported seeing more than five — but very few of them experience conflict with the snake. So it’s kind of cool to know that in the Front Range, if you’re out recreating, you might see a snake but chances are you’re not going to have anything bad happen.
If you are bitten by a rattlesnake, the first question is your personal health. Are you suffering from any sort of immuno-deficiencies? Do you have any allergies? Those can impact how you respond to a bite.
The second question is, where are you bitten? If you are bitten on the face or the neck or the chest, that’s a far more troubling location than on an extremity.
The next question is, were you messing with the snake before it bit you? If you were really agitating the snake and it bites you, it is probably going to release a lot more venom than a snake that you accidentally encounter. When a snake has been agitated — people have been throwing rocks at it or poking at it, trying to get it off the trail — now it’s angry and when it does strike, it’s going to release much more venom. You should just leave them alone and let them decide to go off the trail on their own.
Most adults who are healthy and bitten on an extremity, it’s not going to be a pleasant experience — there’s going to be a lot of swelling and pain, and you absolutely have to go to the doctor, you’re probably going to need to get anti-venom, you’re probably going to spend time in the hospital — but it’s probably not going to be lethal.
But last year we did have the fatality on Mount Galbraith (just northwest of Golden). Sometimes when people are bitten, they have an allergic reaction and they go into anaphylaxis. They lose their airway and that can make a rattlesnake bite lethal very quickly.
Sit down. You need to be calm. If you can get the area that was bitten to body neutral, meaning at the level of your heart or lower, that’s really going to help. The more you move around, the more you amp yourself up and get your blood pumping, you’re pumping that venom through your body. Sit still, remain still and let help come to you. Call 911.
You’re probably going to have horrible pain. People have described it feeling like a bee sting times 10 or 15 or 20. You may have some vomiting. You may have some convulsions. They’re going to get you to an emergency trauma center and you’re probably going to get anti-venom.
If you’re a dog owner, you know this: Dogs explore with their face, so dogs are often bitten on the face, the nose, the neck and even in the eye socket. Those are all really horrible places to have venom come into your body because they’re close to your airway, they’re close to your brain. Dogs that are bitten by rattlesnakes tend to have very severe symptoms, and they need to see a veterinarian right away. If you can, carry your dog out so it’s not walking out, pumping that venom through their body.
There’s a really great preventive tool, it’s called the leash. We really encourage all of our visitors to always use a leash. It’s a great idea for a lot of reasons beyond rattlesnake bites.
I know of a dog that was bitten by a rattlesnake that was on leash, but that’s unusual. All the other bites I’m aware of were off-leash dogs.
That is correct. I say, “No one’s ever been bitten by a snake they left alone.” It’s that simple.