When I spent months in BugSur, CA, I likked to hike up the mountain behind house I rented. Coming down the mountain, there was a rattlesnake stretched across the path.
I though about grabbing a rock and throwing it at him (her?) but what if I missed and snake attacked? So I backed up several steps and ran down , jumped over that snake.. It didn’t seem to care.
Did you know a rattlesnake can strike the distance of its length?
I spotted a big one, maybe 6 ft long and almost as thick as a baseball bat, across a trail at Hidden Villa in Los Altos Hills a few years back. I just stood back and waited until it finally decided to move on. I was standing there thinking “Now what?” I thought briefly about stepping or jumping over it, but decided to wait.
Gopher Snakes look a LOT like rattlesnakes and are much more common. Their heads have the same shape and their colorations are the same, but the head is a lot smaller than the rattlesnake.
Jump over a snake?!
Not a good idea.
Rattlesnakes move very slowly, like 1 mi/hour, but can snap and ambush very fast!
They ambush to 2/3 of their length, even backwards.
So the safest way is to walk around it in wide circle.
They really attack only in self defense.
Like all snakes, they cannot bite off food, so they have to swallow their prey whole.
And we are just to big a bite for them!