Tag: rattlesnake

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Strawberries and Snakes

By Katie Hunhoff

A pretty little strawberry patch flourishes in the backyard of our magazine. Normally, our staffers compete with the birds in June for ripe berries, but this year most of us are avoiding the patch because someone saw a family of snakes living in the dense foliage.

I don’t mind the backyard snakes, but I know ophiophobia — extreme fear of snakes — is prolific. In 2002, we published a story on rattlesnakes and asked Madison artist John Green to paint the cover — a friendly rattler holding an olive branch in his fangs. We were met with the biggest reader backlash in the history of South Dakota Magazine. Readers wrote scathing letters and threatened to cancel their subscriptions if we ever put a snake on the cover again.

We joked that the incident taught us why most magazines put pretty girls and fattening foods on their covers. But we never did it again.

Not all people run at the sight of snakes. A.M. Jackley was considered a hero when he became the state’s official rattlesnake hunter (a paid position) in 1937. He hunted them to help neighbors at first, and discovered he had a talent. Jackley had some opposition from early animal rights believers, but scoffed at his naysayers.”Those of us who have looked upon the still form of a child lying on the prairie with a rattlesnake coiled beside it, or have seen one bitten and suffer death, cannot take kindly this opposition,” he argued.

Ben Smith of Fort Pierre is South Dakota’s modern-day unofficial rattlesnake catcher. Smith grew up on a farm south of Fort Pierre and watched his dad kill snakes and save the rattles. When he was old enough, he started saving the rattles. He eventually began hunting them himself. People know they can call Smith with a snake emergency.”It’s an adrenaline rush to be out there,” he told us.”I’ll come and if I find them I’ll take them out.”

Earl Brockelsby, the father of Reptile Gardens near Rapid City, also felt that rush. But he didn’t kill snakes; he played with them. He first began to work with reptiles as a young guide at a roadside attraction near the Badlands. He soon learned he had a rapport with them.”Every time I came near their cage, they would coil up into a striking position with the neck in an ‘S’ … and rattle vigorously,” Brockelsby wrote years later.”Still, when I reached into the box to lift one out, it wouldn’t strike and would quit rattling once it was in my hand. Then it would crawl up my shirt sleeve, out the collar at my neck, then over my ear, and force his way under my hat where it would then coil tightly on top of my head.”

Brockelsby shocked and impressed tourists with such tricks as the summer progressed, and he eventually parlayed his talents into a new career opportunity at Reptile Gardens. A new book by Sam Hurst, Rattlesnake Under His Hat, tells of Brockelsby’s adventures. You can read a short excerpt in our July/August issue.

All we have here in our Yankton strawberry patch are harmless garter snakes, and yet I don’t think we have a single magazine staffer who would let one crawl up his or her shirt. Anybody want some pick-your-own strawberries?

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A Second for the Rattlesnake

By Ken Blanchard

My SouthDakotaMagazine.com colleague, Paul Higbee, made a case a few days ago for replacing the coyote with the rattlesnake as South Dakota’s state animal. Though tongue in cheek as I guess, his delightful column left me half persuaded — or almost that much.

Rattlesnakes are cool in every sense of the word. With venomous fangs at one end and a burglar alarm at the other, with a long digestive system perfect for small rodents, covered with diamond studded upholstery that would look good on deck furniture, what’s not to love? It is also cold blooded, which means that it has to move into the sun from time to time to warm itself. Sometimes that means curling up on a hiking trail.

I confess some personal reasons for affection. In my late teens I stepped on a rattlesnake. I was hiking in the Ozark National Forest between Gunner Pool and Blanchard’s Springs Caverns (no relation). At some point I stopped to glance back at my companions. Something below my knee caught my eye. It was an enormous rattler under my left foot, coiled and blessedly sleepy, but eyeing me with its lustreless protrusive eyes (hat tip to T.S. Elliot). What did I do? Being of sound mind and body, I stepped off the rattlesnake. I doubt that serpentine faces really have expressions, but this one seemed to be giving me the”do you know what I am supposed to do to you?” look. I bowed solemnly and selected an alternative route.

Many years later I was backpacking in Wind Cave National Park with my daughter. This manageably small, oblong chunk of wilderness, tucked just under Custer State Park, is a great place to introduce one’s progeny to the pleasures of overnight hiking. We had made camp on a nice plateau suitable for sitting out a thunderstorm, which we sat out. After the storm passed, we headed down to explore some prairie dog fields. In our path was a small rattler, come out to enjoy the return of the sun. It was smaller than the aforementioned snake, not much bigger than a tea saucer. Perhaps for that reason it was more aggressive and began rattling immediately. I let Courtney have a good look at it, and then we found our way around. After all, it was the snake’s trail, not ours.

I believe it is true that Benjamin Franklin wanted the wild turkey to be the national bird. There are days when I think that he was spot on. Likewise with the rattlesnake. We who live in the Rushmore state aren’t really going to bite any foot that steps over the state lines, but let’s be honest: don’t we sometimes really want to?

I still think that the coyote is our dog. It’s smaller than the wolf, larger than the fox, about the size of a good house pet but wild and wily, irritating to those who would want everything to be manageable, and able to survive no matter what they try to trap you with. They say that if you have seen one coyote, seven of them have seen you.

If that is not what South Dakota is, then it is what it has always rather wanted to be. Let it continue to aspire. When they look for us to join the party line, let us be as invisible as the coyote.

The first time I heard coyotes howl was in the North Dakota Badlands. The sound was haunting and seemed to inspire a resistance to the changes in the world. I heard it again last summer in Arkansas. The coyote are carrying our message across the lands.

Editor’s Note: Ken Blanchard is our political columnist from the right. For a left-wing perspective on politics, please look for columns by Cory Heidelberger every other Wednesday on this site.

Dr. Ken Blanchard is a professor of Political Science at Northern State University and writes for the Aberdeen American News and the blog South Dakota Politics.

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A New State Animal?

By Paul Higbee

Every few years, someone suggests changing the South Dakota state animal. Of course, the only reason we’ve designated a state animal (coyote) is because the other 49 states all have one. This isn’t the sort of thing down-to-earth prairie dwellers would dream up without outside pressure.

That’s not to say South Dakotans are adverse to arguing the merits of various animal representatives. Lately the debate’s focused on coyotes versus bison, fine native mammals both, yet both rather predictable symbols.

So I suggest a compromise candidate: the rattlesnake.

I’ve long believed rattlers embody characteristics I’ve noted in South Dakotans — quiet until riled, plentiful enough but far from prolific, hardy, and somewhat misunderstood. And yes — down-to-earth.

Sometimes I hike with the express purpose of encountering these snakes, in likely places I know up and down the plains, from pastures in northwestern South Dakota to Palo Duro Canyon, Texas. Truth is, I once hoped to do wildlife photography, but the only animals I found cooperative were rattlers. They don’t turn tail and flee. No, they pose: eyes looking straight at you, body coiled, head and rattles up. They’re a good deal easier to photograph than people, that’s for sure. Photographing coiled rattlers isn’t all that dangerous if you eyeball their body length and don’t move in closer than that. A rattler can’t strike beyond its length any more than a 5-foot kid can slam-dunk a basketball. Still, beginning rattlesnake portraitists should know either the vibes from the camera’s click, or the sudden shutter movement, can trigger a strike. It’s startling if you’re not expecting it, even when the rattler flops a foot short (assuming you’ve eyeballed accurately).

Strikes bring to mind other attributes I admire. Rattlers shoot straight. They don’t fake a strike in one direction and then come at you from another. Nor do they sneak up without warning from behind.

Anyway, I’ve now got a small collection of rattlesnake photos, but until recently I’ve rarely shared them with friends. I mean, you don’t keep pictures of coiled rattlers in those plastic wallet holders. There are always people leery of anyone attuned to rattlesnakes. I recall serving jury duty in Rapid City awhile back, when a lawyer questioned a prospective juror during selection.

Lawyer: I see on the pre-trial questionnaire you completed that you list rattlesnake milking as a hobby.

Juror: Yes, sir.

Lawyer: I assume milking means extracting venom from the fangs?

Juror: Yes.

Lawyer: Any uses for this venom?

Juror: No, sir. I just like catching rattlesnakes and milking them.

He glanced at his client and the snake milker was home before the rest of us had our coats off.

Still, in recent years, I’ve sensed a growing affinity between South Dakotans and rattlesnakes. They’re getting together more and more as Black Hills area subdivisions spring up on lands once deemed fit only for snakes. One thing’s for sure: when someone builds a $200,000 home only to find rattlers sunning themselves on the patio or claiming the car for shade, there’s plenty of local sympathy expressed for the reptiles. (“Who was there first?”)

When South Dakota Magazine published a feature on A.M. Jackley, the legendary rattlesnake exterminator who attacked dens across South Dakota with Genghis Khan-like furor, some readers branded him a villain. Yet 70 years ago South Dakotans considered Jackley’s services essential to civilized life. Times and reputations change, even for snakes and exterminators.

But before we do anything official about the state animal, we may want to test the rattlesnake’s general appeal. Maybe put a rattler on the state travel guide cover. Like I said, I’ve got a few photos.

Editor’s Note: This column is revised from the Jan/Feb 1998 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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The Island Mesa

By Mike Randall

The Island, an isolated mesa near Harding County’s Northern Cave Hills, has drawn explorers for centuries.

The empty mesas of Harding County’s Cave Hills haunt me when I’m away. So I’m glad to be back on this autumn morning just after sunrise with a cold breeze descending from the northwest, hinting at snows to come.

I’ve brought a friend, Tim Herrmann, from the Oregon Coast. We plan to find an isolated mesa that local people call”the Island.” Girdled by 60-foot cliffs and standing uniquely alone in a larger canyon, the Island has attracted people’s attention for thousands of years and its cliffs are full of ancient rock art. Supposedly, only at a single spot hidden from view can one ascend to the Island’s top via a giant staircase of tumbled boulders.

After sunrise, my car bumps along two ruts northward from the small town of Buffalo into Custer National Forest. The ragged track gradually roughens and finally we see a small sign pointing to Davis Draw. Wary of high-centering and ripping out my oil pan, I park near a stock dam on the rolling plain half a mile from the draw’s mouth. Tim and I carry long hiking sticks because we were warned in Buffalo that prairie rattlers are especially thick this year.

We hike a rutted trace toward Davis Draw, its mouth gradually widening before us in the gap between two massive, vertical cliffs. Tim breaks our silence, asking,”What’s that?” and points to the southern cliff where a lone sentinel stands. It’s a”stone Johnnie,” or large rock cairn erected long ago by a bored hunter or herder. Far above us, corrugations of cirrocumulus pale from magenta toward white as the sun climbs above Slim Buttes to our southeast. On such a morning as this, under a mackerel sky, all good things seem possible.

I first heard about the Island several years ago while working as a volunteer with Assistant State Archaeologist Mike Fosha and others at a 6,500-year-old bison kill site west of Buffalo. Mike told me about a mesa in the Northern Cave Hills that was inhabited by spirits. He caged his words humorously, but meant them:”Some day before I die I’m going to take my sleeping bag and a bottle of tequila and spend a night on top of the Island, just to see what — or who — shows up.”

While exploring The Island, Randall and Herrmann found glyphs scratched into stone by ancient hunters and gatherers.

Many long-departed human souls have trod this canyon on hundreds of thousands of mornings like this, hunting antelope, deer and buffalo, gathering plant materials, looking for shelter, casting anxious eyes northward, concerned about the coming cold. For millennia, solitary hunters rediscovered the lonely mesa that stands as an island cathedral.

As we proceed higher into Davis Draw, its sandstone heights loom high and broad beyond us. Steep talus slopes, around or over which we must pass, hide the canyon’s farthest reaches. Ash, cottonwood and oak splashed with autumn’s oranges and yellows adorn the small coulees and hidden ravines that drain the surrounding cliffs. Across the canyon, three pronghorns graze by a dry watercourse, occasionally glancing up to monitor us.

Harding County residents gave me directions to the Island but the descriptions are vague, for it stands far back in the canyon. Many red-brown cliffs precede it, reaching out deceivingly and hinting that they stand apart from the main Cave Hills butte. But after a laborious approach that gains us a better view, we see them for what they are: hoaxers that twist away into box canyons where they connect to the main Cave Hills landform. The sandstone mesas that comprise these Cave Hills stand 300 to 500 feet above the surrounding prairie. Their tables are eroded remnants of a larger strata that covered this entire region 55 or 60 million years ago during the Paleocene epoch. These vibrant scarps dramatically overlay the sober gray and brown hues of the older Hell Creek Formation, which bristles with fossilized dinosaur bones.

We squint at a massive set of escarpments far back in the canyon, perhaps a mile or more away, distances being deceiving. What seems close at hand through the crystalline air is really much farther. Tim says,”You think those cliffs are the Island?”

We can’t tell so we cross the draw to a higher slope to gain a better vantage point. We leave behind a web of cattle trails that lace the lower slopes and thrash our way noisily uphill around car-sized boulders and clumps of prickly pear, dodging still-ripening patches of sand burrs. Our noise is purposeful for we don’t wish to surprise any cranky snakes. Tim comments that we haven’t seen a single one, and I wonder aloud,”Well, we’re just day-tripping outsiders. Maybe we’ve been kidded a bit.”

Finally we reach a point high enough that we see in the distance yellow cottonwoods and green-black pines populating a small declivity that has been eroded. This partial view of the region behind the cliffs implies we are looking at our destination, the Island. Three turkey vultures circle above it on thermals rising from the land.

They nearly stumbled upon a prairie rattler sunning itself on a warm rock.

Half an hour later we find we’re wrong. We struggle up a steep talus slope toward the cliffs and realize it will take us much longer to work our way around them to a point where we can see if they are attached to the main Cave Hills mesa, so we look for a closer spot where one of us can boost the other to the cliff top and clarify the matter. Shortly, we find a low slot. I boost Tim’s foot and he hoists himself over a 6-foot ledge to the top. He finds that the mesa is part of the main, not the Island.

Tired and a bit discouraged, we stop to reconnoiter. To the south we see another prominent set of cliffs. Though we cannot be certain, it seems those vertical walls may front a mesa that stands apart from the Cave Hills. We decide to hike across the canyon and climb the talus that for millions of years has calved from those seemingly-fragile cliffs.

Half an hour later we turn the southeast corner of the cliffs and realize we’ve found our goal, our freestanding”Island.” And there beside us rises a wide rock panel that gradually fills us with a sense of wonder. Incised in rough sandstone walls are many etchings: a bison head shield, an antelope, many overlapping petroglyphs of small animals, a deer, a warrior and spear, a warrior on horseback. And beyond these are incised a set of deeply scarred, elaborate forms that look truly ancient. How old could they be, and what do they depict? We cannot tell, for a portion of that glyph has disappeared long ago, fallen into the canyon through the work of wind and weather.

We separate and search in opposite directions for a pathway to the top. After only a few minutes of exploring I find the jumble of car-sized boulders that will allow us access to the summit. Tim rejoins me and we ascend easily.

The Island is shaped like an old galleon, with massive formations of contorted, pink sandstone rising at its bow and stern. Its eroded midsection is a mat of dried grasses, littered with several gray, fallen skeletons of wind-twisted pines. We stand in silence for a time, gazing west at the far mouth of Davis Draw through which we came over two hours earlier, and at the plains beyond, toward Montana on the horizon.

We separate and explore the high sandstone features at each end, skirting the vertical cliffs that drop away on all sides. As I rejoin Tim, he suddenly glances down, pointing,”Hey, look at him.” Planted firmly in its coil, a young prairie rattler shakes its tail at us from four feet away. Some folks understandably would kill it. But Tim and I simply stand there and watch as the snake warns us for a moment, then slowly uncoils. Holding its head high, it watches us as it retreats onto a massive flat rock near the cliff’s edge 15 feet away.

Bemused, Tim says,”How’d that guy get all the way up here?”

ìIts ancestors probably came up the same way we did, though it must not have been easy,” I reply.

Suddenly, the retreating snake, still watching us, flips awkwardly, belly up, and falls sideways into a vertical rock crevice, wedging into the darkness an unknowable distance below. It may sound foolish, but I felt a sudden sense of loss. The young snake, eager to escape, watched us rather than where it was going, making a possibly fatal mistake.

Tim shakes his head.”Somebody’s gonna wonder why he’s late for dinner.”

We glance around to make sure no other members of the same family are present, then take a seat. We pull out water bottles, trail mix, apples. A zephyr of refreshingly cool air brings the pungent scent of sage and pine pitch, and melodic hints of distant birdsong. Across the canyon on the main Cave Hills mesa’s twisted cliffs lie remnants of the same pink sandstone that stands near us. It’s so eroded and contorted by great pressures and stresses over so many eons that only an imperturbably patient God could have witnessed it, a God who loves a story in a slowly unfolding world.

After a while, Tim and I slowly gather our stuff. We look around a last time, not wanting to leave this wild cathedral. A sudden breeze of cooler air reminds me that another autumn soon will end, and this Island mesa will fall into silent stillness. Cold winds will drift snow across this empty height, hiss against these cliffs, fill the snake’s crevice. And who will be there to see it? The snow will sift into badger holes and coulees, settle on the talus slopes and fallen boulders. It will silence the rattling wheatgrass, greasewood and phlox, and smother the bleached bones of the dead.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is revised from the September/October 2009 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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The Last Chokecherry Picking

By Margaret Roghair

While making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for our picnic lunch, I heard the happy voices of my two little boys through the open kitchen window. It was almost autumn. The tall prairie grass surrounding our Jones County farm near Okaton was turning brown and the chokecherries were ripe: The kids and I were going to pick some with a friend, Fran, and her two little girls.

As we traveled to Fran’s house up and down the roller-coaster hills (we called the road passage”Tipperary” after the famous bucking horse), the meadowlarks greeted us with songs. Goldenrods nodded as if to say,”All is well this happy day.” We watched an old eagle rise lazily from his lookout on a high corner fence post and soar into the blue sky. A snake slithered across the road, reminding me that danger was always near. If someone got bit by a rattlesnake, could I slash the skin with a razor blade and suck out blood before starting the 70 miles to a doctor?

Our car rattled over the planks of the old wooden bridge and Fran’s big shaggy dog, hearing us approaching, announced our arrival. Fran tucked her two small girls into her car and led me across the prairie toward the corner of the school section where she knew chokecherries abounded.

We followed as her car bounced over crisscrossed car tracks on the prairie. We came upon a prairie dog town and watched the little creatures pop out of their mounds and stand on hind legs to peer at us. They would bark and scold, then scurry down their holes.

A few miles further and we had reached an isolated and sheltered draw, devoid of vegetation except for wild chokecherry that bordered the bank of a dry creek on the further side.

The children scrambled from the cars, eager to pick the tiny berries. Soon their faces were smeared with the purple juice and their lips puckered from the astringent taste of the wild fruit, and they were off to play. I had spread a blanket on the ground in the sheltered cove and Fran and I took turns calling the youngsters back from the tall grass that surrounded this sheltered little spot. Here was a small world all our own with only our little ones and the songs of birds and the chirping of crickets to keep us company.

Then the solitude was broken by the sound of an airplane overhead. We recognized it as that of a rancher who lived farther on up the creek. He was making a routine trip to town. The children shouted and waved their straw hats and sunbonnets as the pilot tipped the plane’s wings in response.

After we had filled our pails with the cherries and had our picnic lunch, we gathered our little ones and returned to our homes. I prepared the chokecherry juice and made a beautiful, clear jelly. The day was such a success, I considered writing a message on the jar’s labels about our fun outing.

As I was contemplating, my husband arrived from town with the mail. He spread the”Weekly” in front of me and pointed to the headline:”Rattlesnake Den Discovered.” I read on,”When Mr. Lynn Lyman was flying home to his ranch yesterday afternoon, he saw a gleaming patch beneath him as he flew over the dry creek bed in the corner of the school section where wild chokecherries grow. Closer scrutiny revealed a glistening, moving mass. To his astonishment he saw it was a mass of rattlesnakes. Instead of continuing to his ranch, he returned to town and summoned the state rattlesnake eradicator, and together they killed the snakes, numbering eighty in all. Rattlesnakes come from afar and gather into a den to hibernate in the fall, and it was not previously known that this thicket was their winter rendezvous.”

We saved the jelly for special occasions, for we did not venture out again to pick chokecherries.

EDITOR’S NOTE — The author, Margaret Bowder Roghair, was a native of Timber Lake who later moved to Oregon. She died in 2012. Her chokecherry picking memories appeared in the July/Aug 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order this back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.