Posted on 03/28/2026 2:10:29 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
The woman, identified as 46-year-old Gabriela Bautista, is the second person to suffer a fatal bite in recent weeks.
A 46-year-old hiker died after a rattlesnake bit her on a popular Southern California hiking trail, the area’s second death by snakebite this year, authorities say. Gabriela Bautista was hiking at Wildwood Regional Park, a popular area near Thousand Oaks with 17 miles of trail, when she suffered a bite on March 14 at about 11:40 a.m., Ventura County Fire Department spokesperson Andrew Dowd told the Thousand Oaks Acorn. Emergency services airlifted Bautista to Los Robles Regional Medical Center, where she died on March 19. While the incident occurred earlier this month, it had not been publicly reported until this week.
Bautista’s death came just weeks after another fatal snake encounter in Southern California. On February 1, Julian Hernandez, 25, was mountain biking near Irvine. He stopped to adjust his shoe when he lost his balance and fell into some brush, where a rattlesnake apparently bit him, the Irvine Police Department told Los Angeles’s ABC7. While Orange County firefighters rushed Hernandez to the hospital, he died just over a month later on March 4.
A warm winter and spring across much of the western United States may be contributing to higher-than-usual rattlesnake activity. Dowd told Los Angeles’s KTLA that in 2025 the department recorded 9 rattlesnake-related calls, and that since March 14 alone, it had responded to 4. Following the bites, San Bernardino National Forest issued an alert warning visitors of rattlesnakes in the area.
Deaths by snakebite are extremely rare in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 7,000 to 8,000 people suffer venomous snakebites every year, with only 5 or so dying as a result. In August of 2025, a hiker died from an allergic reaction to a rattlesnake bite in Tennessee’s Savage Gulf State Park. Authorities later said they believed that the hiker had picked up the snake, possibly in an attempt to move it.
You were taught well. If you save that stick your wife will use it to bite down on during labor. Then it becomes an heirloom.
I did that with a frog once “small tree frog”. A very loud horse fly was invading my back porch harmony. I spied said frog and snatched him up. He didn’t like it but I wasn’t harming him. The loud horse fly landed on the wall and I placed the frog up near him. When the loud pest buzzed and landed again the frog crept up and snatched him. His tongue seemed twice his body length and the horse fly was almost as big as the small frog.
Here’s another “ bit off topic”... none the less ...we had a indoor / outdoor kitty and one day she wanted to come back in the house and was sitting there on the porch and I asked myself “ why does this kitty look like poncho gonzales??
I freaked out!!😂😂😂 she was holding a garter snake in her mouth and then her mouth dropped and the snake was inside the house! talk about double freak out because I didn’t know how to catch it 😂😂😂
No. Useful info though if I ever go back to rattlesnake country.
Worst animal I’ve seen in Spokane is a chipmunk, very cute.
We need common sense rattlesnake control.
My G-ma in Van Horn, Tx has a specific hoe for chopping snakes and a specific place where it goes that I moved it from.
Send the cat in after it!
For some reason we can’t kill them in TN
Here in the northern part of the Gold Country Rattlesnakes are an issue every spring and summer They were very light last year, but who knows this year. I kill the suckers everytime I see them. Use .22 snake shot, but here in California can’t get any more ammo without jumping through obcene hoops.
I have a bag of #11 bird shot and a black power remington revolver—I could use that I suppose.
At this time of year when going to the barn or garage its with a stick poking at all the corners and listening for rattles. I will always carry that funky remington 22 rifle down to the barn in the summer. It comes in handy, let me tell you.
Forty, 50 years ago in Portola Valley, there was a young skull full of mush who happened upon what he “thought” was a dead bat. It wasn’t dead, and when the Yute tried to pick it up, it bit him.
He had to go through the rabies injection protocol.
I keep my headphones on both ears, sometimes. Mostly in my back yard. Out in the world, at least one ear is not covered. Whatever I want to listen to, podcast, music, audio books, etc, will be there when I return to my back yard.
Whenever I see a bicyclist roaring around town with headphones on both ears, I wonder if they are the next recipient of a Darwin Award.
I live in Central Texas on several acres out in the woods. We have rattlesnakes. I leave them alone unless they come close to my house where they could be a danger to my dogs. If such I kill them. Odd thing about my dogs. When they see a snake their alarm bark is very different that a normal bark but they know not to get close to the snake. When they see the shotgun they back off behind me, they know what is next.
What is the annual cost of that medicine to carry, and how much trouble, does it need to be kept cool?
I must be very lucky. I was born and raised on the High Plains and rocky Mountain areas, had the run of millions of acres and have only seen ONE rattlesnake in the wild.
Seen lots of copperheads and cotton mouths in the South, but no rattlesnakes.
Try this video of dogs bringing home unwanted creatures.
https://www.tiktok.com/@lance.bisson/video/7551746363088817422
One word: Tonga.
It’s just a flesh wound.
“we can’t kill them in TN”
Too ornery to kill? Thick / tough hides? Too quick?
“Whenever I see a bicyclist roaring around town with headphones on both ears, I wonder if they are the next recipient of a Darwin Award.”
the city attorney in a nearby town did this and got hit by a car he couldn’t hear ... he was mangled so badly it took him a year to be semi-functional again ...
Maybe your elevation is too high for rattlesnakes?
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