More snakes and a bit of an apology
- John Lorson: The Rail Trail Naturalist
- August 6, 2025
- 121
To the handful of my readers who absolutely detest snakes, I suppose I should begin with an apology. This is my second “snake column” in a row. But as regular visitors to this column well know, I write about what I find when I’m out and about, and this year seems to be a great one when it comes to long, legless reptiles. When life gives me snakes, I write about snakes!
And so it was that my buddies and I were blasting down a mountain bike trail in North Carolina when we encountered another rider headed upward on the same trail. He was dismounted, standing in the middle of the trail and waving his arms. Lucky for us! As we skidded to a stop, he pointed at the trail between us where a nearly 4-foot-long Timber rattlesnake was lounging in a sunbeam. Had we not been warned, we most certainly would have crossed paths with dramatic consequences!
I had only seen a Timber rattler once before—a juvenile only about a foot long. It had suffered the same fate our big boy had just dodged and was lying dead along the trail. This day’s snake was a beast! Colorful, healthy and as thick as my forearm, it moved with the quiet confidence of a lethal predator. While the triangularly-shaped head was a good clue, a white rattle the size of my thumb at the other end was a dead giveaway that this guy deserved all the space and time he needed to get across the trail.
Snakes, just as nearly all of the wildlife we encounter in the Northeastern U.S., mostly just wish to be left alone to go about their business. In the case of the Timber rattler, its business is delivering a venomous bite to paralyze small mammals and then swallow them whole. Sure, a person could end up with a dose of that venom, but the snake would need to feel truly threatened before it would take on something the size of a human. (Of note, getting run over by a bike would likely constitute such a threat.)
And while the bite of a Timber rattlesnake is every bit venomous, it is far from a death sentence in most cases. Statistics show only 22 fatalities in a recent span of 30 years (American Journal of Emergency Medicine). Most of those deaths came when treatment was delayed or the victim had other medical issues.
Timber rattler encounters in Ohio are rare. Furthermore, of the state’s 25 native snake species, only three are venomous. The other two include the Eastern Massasauga rattlesnake (even more rare and endangered than the Timber rattler) and the Northern Copperhead, which exists in about a third of Ohio’s counties. Your best bet is to simply leave snakes be. When life gives you snakes, take three steps back and go the other way!
If you have comments on this column or questions about the natural world, write The Rail Trail Naturalist, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email jlorson@alonovus.com. You also can follow along on Instagram @railtrailnaturalist.