Massasauga Rattlers

A number of years ago I was walking through Deerwood and heard a hissing sound like a high pressure air leak. It was the sound of snake rattle.

I looked down and my foot was about three feet away from a Massasauga rattlesnake - the only poisonous snake in the region that I know of. Thought the best thing to do was to RUN AWAY! And I did.

They're a threatened species and it's a real no-no to harm these animals. Now that I work on Georgian Bay islands, the odds are pretty good that I'll come across another one sometime soon. One of the crew met one on a forest path a few weeks back and lived to tell the tale.

Another one of the guys told me about his buddy who used to be in the Coast Guard on Georgian Bay. They'd go out and paint lighthouses in the summer and there'd be one guy (who wore chainsaw pants for protection) who's only job was to catch these rattlesnakes and to toss them on the helipad - out of the way.

The trick is to catch the rattler by the tail and start spinning the head in a circle right away before you toss it. That's so it can't swing up and bite your arm.

How do you get started with a job like that?

Now here's something else buddy told me. The reason why there's some islands on The Bay with plenty 'o rattlers is because when the loggers first arrived in the mid 1800s, they raised hogs on some of the islands and put rattlers on the islands so the hogs could feed on them. I don't know if I believe that, but that's what he said.