National Geographic: King Rattler Page #4

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And the pregnant diamondback

feels it most.

A month before labor

she hunkers down,

feeding stops, movement stops

for the most part.

Labor lasts 12 exhausting hours,

as she gives birth to a clutch of

a dozen little diamondbacks.

Though the young are carried

within her body and born live,

they hatch from sacks identical to eggs

but without the finishing touch

the shell.

From the beginning, young rattlers

can deliver a lethal dose of venom

and soon bear the first button of

their baby rattle.

Conventional wisdom says snakes

don't make good mothers.

But Means believes

Eastern diamondbacks may.

The mother stays close to the clutch

in the first crucial days of life,

although the reason may

simply be exhaustion.

Deadly as the diamondback may be,

they grow into a world of treachery.

Few survive their first year,

for danger lurks in every direction

even from other snakes.

The kingsnake is known as

a muscular hunter

a constrictor that kills

by suffocating its prey.

Tongue flicks sample the air.

The diamondback senses a dangerous foe

the kingsnake, dinner.

The kingsnake gets its name

because it eats other snakes

and it's immune to

its opponent's venom.

Pinning the diamondback

in its corkscrew coils,

it crushes its victim,

than swallows it whole.

It leaves the trophy till last.

More treacherous than the snake's

natural predators the commercial hunter.

While against the law, practices

like this go on to this day.

Hunters are paid $10 a foot for

diamondbacks, as much as $60 a snake.

Outwitted, the rattler is lured into

betraying itself

with its last line of defense.

The hunter listens

for the telltale rattle.

A spray of gasoline chokes the burrow.

The snake is desperate

to escape the fumes

and abandons the sanctuary of the

tunnel, winding up in a bucket.

The burrow that had harbored so much

life may now become a wasteland.

No one knows how long the gas

fumes may linger.

If the snakes are not killed outright,

many are brought to

rattlesnake roundups,

which have been entertaining

audiences for decades.

It's 39 years we've had this roundup.

It's a way of controlling

the snakes down in this country.

And I don't really know if it has

that much of an impact,

but we seem to get a lot of

snakes every year.

Each year, Eastern diamondbacks

are captured for roundups

that attract crowds as large as 25,000.

That's essentially a diamond there.

Yeah, we come up here

for rattlesnake burgers.

They tell us they're really good.

Yeah, you know

I had to say chicken. Chicken?

Then I said take the alligator too.

People want to cook them,

kill them and wear them.

They even want their venom, which

the roundups milk at bargain prices

for medical researchers.

Means attends roundups to take a head

count of the rattlers,

trying to gauge the impact these

events have on the Eastern diamondback.

The snakes are treated badly.

They're exploited for money,

then killed, with no thought for them

as a renewable resource.

Worse than the roundup, says Means,

is the skin trade.

Hides become fashion.

It is an ironic end

for the Eastern diamondback,

the magical camouflage

that had hid the snake so well

now calls attention to its wearer.

This is out of control and needs

much more regulation.

Even alligators are licensed

and tagged now.

But dead diamondbacks,

they're treated as party favors.

Roundups give people

the wrong message.

The truth is these snakes are

not expendable, they're not evil.

People need to realize the value of

what they're destroying.

This is already a snake

hard pressed to survive.

But roundups and snake skin

boots are just one threat.

Humans keep upping the ante

on the snake's future,

and dangers are everywhere.

In the summer, hot highways become

killing gauntlets or worse

burning barriers, cutting the snake

off from its habitat.

Little more than two percent of the

rattlers' ancient territory remains.

Humanity's pattern of destruction,

the precious longleaf pinelands replaced

by regiments of future two by fours,

plowed over by agriculture,

slashed apart by highways,

and fragmented into withering islands,

the leftovers of development.

There may not be enough land left

to the snake to sustain it,

let alone provide a future.

And as the snake goes,

so go his neighbors.

What the diamondback needs

is a better image,

more public relations, some fans.

One of the roundups in the Eastern

United States has done a wonderful job

of this very sort of thing.

They don't even call it

a roundup anymore,

because they do not roundup snakes.

It's called a festival.

And they are very frightened

of people.

If you come across one,

he'll usually coil up,

shake his tail,

and back away from you.

And they put emphasis on

environmental education.

They have just as many people

that come to the festival.

They'll crawl down in there

and live there

with the turtle and just stay there.

Every now and then something

will spook a rabbit,

he'll run down the hole, he'll get

a meal served to him like meal service.

These civic organizations that are

involved in running the festival

in the communities generate just

as much income as any of these roundups

that put the accent on beautization

and misuse of the creatures.

It may be that it's already too late

for the Eastern diamondback.

While well adapted to

the trials of nature,

the torments of humans are

pushing the rattler to its limit.

Means fears that before we fully

understand the snake's role

in the environment, it may be gone.

But even he acknowledges

that the snakes

have found some surprising ways

to survive.

Florida's torrents flood the lowlands

and tiny streams become channels.

Even the tortoise goes with the flow,

if sometimes reluctantly.

The hazards of the deep abound.

Carried along on the stream,

the hard-pressed animals take

with them the future.

Means believes the snake's

survival skills might help it endure.

Swimming makes it mobile.

Streams become highways,

escape routes from the destruction

caused by development,

and these streams sometimes

ferry snakes all the way out to sea.

The Eastern diamondback island hops.

It's been found way out as far as

the The Dry Tortugas.

That's about 120 miles

from the Florida Coast.

This could be the snake's salvation,

but like everywhere else,

the islands are prime real estate

for development.

Propelled far and fast

beyond their normal range,

the diamondbacks become pilgrims

protected by their isolation.

Where the snake's habitat

is overrun by development,

the flood carries survivors

to another, more welcoming place,

their distant island,

though it may be full of fiddler crabs.

Still, on his own,

Means scours the barrier islands,

studying the snakes

in their remote habitats.

The Eastern diamondback is likely

to be an endangered species very soon.

It has a special role in nature

and it won't take much for it

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