It's All Trew: For goodness sakes: Seems I'm done being rattled

The Trew Ranch has always been a bit "snaky." We have miles of caprock ledges and canyons that provide many homes for snakes. From 1949 to about 1960, we had three resident prairie dog towns located on the ranch. Between the dog towns and the canyons, we would harvest a quart jar full of rattlesnake rattles each summer. No person was ever snakebit that I remember, but cattle, horses and dogs became victims each year. Snake sightings dropped drastically after the demise of the dog towns. The Rana Ranch in New Mexico continued to produce more than its share of rattlers, even though no dog towns were present. A day's ride in summertime always harvested a rattling souvenir or two, some more than 2 inches long as displayed in a memory box in our home. We can tell stories for hours about snakes and snaky experiences. In 2003, I killed two large, almost black diamondback coon-tail rattlers in our backyard at Alanreed. It had been years since we had seen this type of snake, especially in our yards. In 2004, I killed three more, the same size, color and type. I began to suspect they were littermates from a nearby den. We began looking for snake holes each time we left the yards. In 2005, I found three more of the same type and markings, but maybe a little larger and longer than the others...read more