Rattlesnake gives Pepper a scare; watch out for perfect camouflage in yards

BURNET — We had a big a shakeup out here in Burnet County last week. It gave us bad dreams for a couple of days, but Rana’s little dog, Pepper, a true mutt if ever there was one, is still suffering from PTSD.

I had just let the dogs out for the morning when she began a kind of incessant barking that usually signals something other than deer. She hates the deer that come up around the house and thinks it’s her job to scatter them to the four corners.

But this was different, right in the corner where the fence meets the house, and it wasn’t stopping in any way. I looked out the window and could only see her circling the root system of a cenizo that died in the ice storm. She was angry and letting us know we needed to check this out.

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I’ve been living here long enough, and had enough dogs bitten by rattlesnakes, to suspect it might be a rattler, but that wasn’t her snake bark, and I couldn’t see the snake that might be agitating her.

I called to Rana that we needed to bring the dogs back inside so I could check the yard for a snake. I grabbed my snake tongs from where I keep them on the front porch and called them in as I walked out to check. I banged on the dead cenizo a couple of times, thinking maybe that would shock any snake into rattling to give away his position.

Nothing happened.

So I took a couple of steps forward just to make sure, scanning the ground, and then I saw it, coiled up on a flat rock right against the wooden fence. The camouflage was perfect, with the dark diamonds on its back blending seamlessly with the dirt on the rock. Thin-looking but still fairly long at around 4 feet and impossible for Pepper to walk by as she made her rounds checking out the fence that morning, the snake was calm and perfectly still.

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I slowly reached under it with the tongs and secured a good grab just forward of midway down the snake. Only then did it start to rattle, a pitiful sound that came from rattles that were obviously freshly broken off about three rattles up from the tail.

Since we don’t spare any rattlers that come into the yard where our dogs and grandkids hang out, I dispatched the snake, doing the old country chop to separate his head from his body. I tossed both off into the cedars and went inside to check on Rana and the dogs.

Over the years, we’ve had our dogs trained for snake avoidance multiple times, and it has worked. My springer spaniel Ceilidh won’t get near them even when I’m holding her on a leash. She gets behind me and sits whenever she sees or smells one.

Pepper, though, still seemed to be angry with rattlers and, until she felt the shock from the electric collar, never had any fear of them. She’d sit on the ground near a rattlesnake and bark until I came out to check on her.

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But something must have happened this time, because she’s obviously traumatized by the adventure. If we try to put her outside, she’ll turn and run back into the house. If I carry her to the porch out there, she stands on the porch with her tail tucked between her legs and doesn’t leave that spot.

I’ve wondered if she was trailing down the fence and got too close to the snake, which then struck at her and gave her a fright. Or if she saw it crawling and tried to grab it by the tail (which would account for the broken set of rattles) and the snake responded with a strike that got close enough to scare her.

We will never know, of course, until we find out in heaven when she’s able to tell us about it. Meanwhile, Ceilidh is still waiting on the porch, content to stay safe there. Pepper will get over it, we hope, and get back to her old self.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Rattlesnakes can be obscured by perfect camouflage