Snake Season
It’s been 6 years since we bought our home at the outskirts of Arivaca, and on April 20 th we saw a rattlesnake on the property for the first time. I’d bet that some have passed through previously without our being around to notice, but this Western Diamondback appeared content to hang around a while. It was coiled up peacefully in the shady bed beneath the Pine Tree, well-disguised in the wood chip mulch. Pretty good camouflage, don't you think? I think Western Diamondbacks are quite beautiful (admired from a distance), with their tiny Zorro mask, crisscross body pattern, and banded tail rattles. When local rattlesnake “re-homing” expert R.D. Ayers arrived, his opinion was that our visitor was a 2-3 year old female approx. 30 inches long, that was very well fed and had recently shed her skin, so was especially attractive. This time of year is when rattlesnakes typically come out of hibernation and resume their daily routines: hunti