Shake, Rattle, & Roll

At long last, after four days of searching— I found it: the Southern Pacific Rattlesnake.

If you’re an LA local, or even a resident of the American Southwest more generally, you probably think I’m crazy for looking for these so hard. Heck, my partner and her mom told me stories about running into dozens of them throughout elementary, middle, and high school. But that’s part of why I wanted to make them a target species. Easy get, right? WRONG.

Spring is here, and the weather is warming, but the snakes are really just beginning to emerge. Depending on the weather, snakes may not be getting started until April or May, and plenty of locals told me they hadn’t really been seeing them yet. I spent the better part of four days stamping around through the wild and rolling hills surrounding Thousand Oaks early and late in the day, but to no avail. The great thing about Rattlesnakes is despite being incredibly dangerous, they’re also deeply uninterested in biting us. In fact, they’d much rather not be seen or heard at all, a fact which made it all the more difficult for a burgeoning herper (reptile enthusiast) like myself to find one.

At long last, I found a juvenile basking along a trail in the Rancho Portrero Open Space— only to have a bold hiker pass me and scare the little serpant right off the path. What’s a wildlife photographer to do? Return to old reliable: checking snake traps.

No, I don’t mean literal snake traps, which are both deeply unethical and a waste of time. A “snake trap” is a flat object, like corrugated iron or a shipping pallet, that lures snakes as a tempting place to stretch out and gather warmth. Underneath just such a trap, I found my target at last: a big, beautiful, dangerous Southern Pacific Rattlesnake. And I managed to document the slithery fellow without getting bit! A delightful end to a struggle that should have been much much easier.