Nobody likes to be turned aside when they are on a self-assigned mission. This includes bullsnakes.
I don’t know everything that motivates bullsnakes
to go where they go, but I do know they have one potentially fatal quirk.
Operating as cold-blooded creatures, when a bullsnake (or most any snake)
intersects with an open roadway, they tend to stretch out to take in heat from
the sun. They will pause their journey there, even at the risk of being run
over by passing automobiles.
Yesterday, on a drive back from town, I spotted a
3-foot bullsnake extending onto the road not far from my house. As is my habit,
I stopped and prodded the snake back off the road. The snake readily objected
to my intrusion by coiling and hissing at me. It struck at me a couple of
times. Though they are not poisonous, having any snake strike at you unleashes
a primal fear within you. I eventually pulled a twisted branch from a nearby
rabbitbrush and used that to urge the snake a few feet off the road.
The snake did not thank me but rather gave me the
beady-eye treatment before I left it there amid the bunchgrass and scrub.
—Mitchell Hegman
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