Go, you chicken fat, go away!

Today is Vickie's birthday.  Yesterday she said she wanted to go on a hike.  I think she wanted the whole family to go, but she didn't tell us.  I got up and she decided it would just be her and me.  Fine by me, I guess.  She found a short easy hike fairly close to us.  Turns out it was right at Bulldog.  But instead of going east, the hike was on the west side of Usery Pass Road.  It was actually one of the peaks of Usery Mountain, but not the highest peak.  We started at 8:31am.  Kinda late, but the temperature has been going down lately, so it wasn't too hot.  We crossed the street, straddled over the broken barbed wire fence, and started trudging up the sandy wash.  After a couple hundred feet I could hear gun shots.  The gun range is right on the other side of the mountain, but these sounded closer.  We kept going and then I could see some people up ahead behind the brush.  We got closer and saw that it looked like a scout troop.  I'm ok with them learning gun safety, but I don't think they are allowed to shoot there.  Anyway, after that Vickie checked her All Trails and realized we weren't on the trail.  That makes sense because I see mountain bikers come in here all the time and there's no way they could pedal through all this sand.  So we cut through the desert and got on the trail.

At one mile in I head the distinct shake of a rattle.  It startled me, but not to the point where your blood runs cold.  I was more scared that I was pretty well exposed with tennis shoes, short socks and shorts, and that my wife was right behind me, and that I would rather the snake bite me than Vickie, and that I wouldn't be able to stop her from walking into it in time.  So I did the only thing I could do; I yelled, "Dut dut dut dut dut dut dut!"

It was kind of exciting, and we weren't really in any danger.  But in the brief time between hearing it and seeing it, a myriad of thoughts go through your head.  We circled around it, taking pictures and videos.  It did what it was supposed to do.  Warned us by shaking its rattle and got ready to strike if we got too close.  I did want to try and catch it, but Vickie talked me out of it.  It stopped rattling as we walked around it, which didn't make for exciting footage, so I kicked some rocks at it so it would start rattling again.

After that we were on high alert, but we didn't see any more snakes for the rest of the hike.  It was an out and back, and by the time we got back it was gone.  We stopped and got donuts on the way home for Vickie's birthday breakfast.