To Skin a Rattlesnake

Twenty six years ago, I made my first trip to the Fuller family cabin in remote Gravelly Valley, California. East Coast girl's first pioneering adventure in the wild west. There I strolled with my mother in a field of dry grass, where we considered that more than a century earlier on that same plain, hardy ladies in white cotton dresses and bonnets danced to fiddle tunes with gentlemen in black trousers and suspenders. We walked by the swimming pool buried under the silt of the '64 flood waters that washed down the valley a whole compound of rustic cabins, stables, and dining hall along with all the creature comforts of society life delivered from San Francisco. We poked around some broken boards of a washed-out walkway that surrounded the pool when we heard an unsettling sound. We'd been instructed to run if we heard the rattlesnake's warning, so we did. The fellas -- Brian (now my husband), his father George, and brother Kirk -- asked if we might have mistaken a cicadas' pitch there in the June heat, but if there's anything you know better than any other North American if you're from the humid Eastern Seaboard, it's cicadas. We shot them our look, and they grabbed the trident and a shovel. According to the Gravelly rattlesnake code: take no chances where your babies sleep, we had to kill it. The photo above was taken just a moment before the look of horror that came to my face when the field mouse digesting inside that rattler dropped green and slimy out of the beheaded end.

Fast forward to last Saturday; same time of year, damned near same spot where those broken walkway boards lay scattered like bleached bones. This time, the pool is cleaned out, and our son Malcolm and his friend Remington were clearing the old drainage when a big ol' rattler caught their attention. Where Gravelly code trumps animal rights in our little neck of the wilderness, off came its head (but not without second thoughts about passing this legacy onto the kids in front of us). We bury the head to keep animals from chomping onto the venom pouches in its cheeks. As we all stood around marveling at the impulses continuing to make the headless body coil and slither, I suggested we go on in to get a closer look at the decentralized nervous system inside. As soon as the words came out of my mouth, the thrill of biology filled the air, and they knew: a field dissection would be taking place that afternoon. The boys and men gave me a strange look that suggested they were intrigued but had other things suddenly on their agendas.

Remington had a utility knife with a serrated edge on one blade and sharp straight edge on the other. With dramatic ceremony, I removed the rattle and handed the trophy over to him, as my father-in-law had done for my mother and me a quarter century earlier. It's a mistake to think the segments on a rattle indicate age like the rings in a tree trunk. They gain new segments each time they shed their skin, which can occur several times a year.


I carried the body back to the cabin grounds where I nailed it to a tree to drain. A few hours later, I secured it to a board and began the necropsy. The photo to the left shows the first cut, and the ones below show my laboratory, the midsection cut, and the skin drying on the board after I cleaned it in the creek. (Admittedly at that point it had become a badge of honor.)




I spare you the macro-lens close-ups I took of the various stages of dissection (but if you have the stomach for it, click on the links below), during which I learned:

• The skin comes away quite easily from the flesh; only a thin membrane and some white fibers binds them.
• The skin around the tail end is tougher and more tightly bound to the flesh.
• A long silver cord extends from the neck and reminded me of a spinal cord without the vertebrae to protect it. This is the snake's trachea; it ends near the heart.
• The main organs gather about three inches below the head. It's the only place the body bleeds.
• Gas exchanges that occur near the lungs were still functioning after I cut; thin membranes filled up like bubbles.
• Fat collected around the other end, over the kidneys, small intestine and colon.
• You simply can't appreciate the intricate pattern on a snake skin until it lays flat.
• Rattlesnakes have scent glands at their tail; I didn't see them.
  

Removing the skin

Main organs
Gallbladder
Kidney