On August 15th, 2009, I was hiking with my sister up Shadow Canyon trail near
\nBoulder. There’s a lot of semi-arid, scrubby open space on this trail
\nbefore you get to the forested part. It’s also steep, with a lot of
\nnatural and semi-natural steps made out of rocks. Because of the
\nsteps, you can’t see every square inch of the trail as you’re coming
\ndown. As we were climbing this segment of the trail, a man, girl, boy
\nand dog were coming down, toward us. This sequence of events proceeded
\nto unfold:<\/p>\n
* Boy (age 9-ish) and dog are running ahead toward us.
\n* Boy, in mid-stride, spots rattlesnake coiled underfoot, in middle of trail.
\n* Boy has no choice, jumps over, lets out yelp of fright in midair.
\n* Dog follows, hops over snake.
\n* By this time snake is signaling his alarm.
\n* Boy and dog land on trail near us. Boy, unharmed, is whimpering and
\nvisibly shaken.
\n* Man and girl (age 40-ish and 9-ish) have stopped. Man comments,
\ndeadpan, “that is a rattlesnake.”
\n* Sis and I have only now become fully cognizant of situation.
\n* Dog lunges toward snake, growling. Humans urge dog to back off.
\nSnake urges dog to back off.
\n* Dog enters striking radius, backs off after repeated commands,
\nsomehow unbitten.
\n* Everyone pauses to catch breath, maintaining healthy distance from snake.<\/p>\n
Eventually, the man and girl circumvented the snake by picking through
\nthe brambles on the south side of the trail. They were relieved, and
\nall four continued down after a few minutes. Sis and I were left
\nwondering what to do. Should we turn around? Should we circumvent the
\nsnake and keep going up? If we came back by the same route, where will
\nthe snake have moved to? Should we attempt to kill the snake?<\/p>\n
Since there were so many people on the trail, including kids and dogs,
\nwe decided this was not the snake’s lucky day. We’d neglected to bring
\nsidearms or small explosives, however, so there was a lot of
\ndeliberating as to the best approach. We crossed the brambles to the
\nupper part of the trail, still debating. An older couple passed by,
\nnavigating the brambles. The lady stumbled and got scratched up in the
\nbushes. They continued on.<\/p>\n
After psyching myself up for about fifteen minutes, I dug up a
\nfootball-sized rock, did a few practice throws, and lobbed it at the
\nsnake. I missed by two feet on the first toss. The snake, he was not
\namused. I scrambled for another rock. And another, and another, and
\nanother; eight in all. And then a lot of whacking with a stick.
\nSuffice to say, Mr. Snake met its demise that day, however he fought
\nvaliantly. I could feel his fangs scratching and gnawing the end of
\nthe stick.<\/p>\n
We took a moment of silence to commemorate our fallen foe and to
\nreflect upon the universal struggle of nature. Then we cast his snaky
\nremains aside for the foxes and continued up the trail.<\/p>\n
– Greg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On August 15th, 2009, I was hiking with my sister up Shadow Canyon trail near Boulder. There’s a lot of semi-arid, scrubby open space on this trail before you get to the forested part. It’s also steep, with a lot of natural and semi-natural steps made out of rocks. Because of the steps, you can’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noreimerreason.com\/amberandgreg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noreimerreason.com\/amberandgreg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noreimerreason.com\/amberandgreg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noreimerreason.com\/amberandgreg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noreimerreason.com\/amberandgreg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1545"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/noreimerreason.com\/amberandgreg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3295,"href":"https:\/\/noreimerreason.com\/amberandgreg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions\/3295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noreimerreason.com\/amberandgreg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noreimerreason.com\/amberandgreg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noreimerreason.com\/amberandgreg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}