EricCWelch

No doubt the lunatic fringe will discover some symbolic message in the call number of this book. Whatever, rattlesnakes are unique. No other vertebrate animal
has its kind of warning device. It's an admonition
that never fails to provoke a strong reaction in humans. Snakes in general provoke revulsion, but rattlesnakes seem to have a special place in the pantheon of loathing. Naturally, anything humans fear usually winds up in some
kind of religious ceremony and the Hopi Indians
and several fundamentalist sects use them in
snake handling rituals.

There are a lot of misconceptions about rattlesnakes:
their age cannot be calculated by counting the rattles, they do not always rattle before striking, and they can bite under water. Even though there are more than eighty species
of rattlesnakes, they are found only in the Americas, and most are indigenous to North America. They vary in size from quite small to over eight feet in length. Rattlesnakes are
thought to have originated in Mexico. Their bones are so brittle that the fossil record is sparse, but there is some evidence that the eastern diamondback was a substantial snake
living as long ago as the Pleistocene and may have been over eight feet long and twelve inches in width.

The snakes are never fangless. Because the fangs are so important to their survival, for defense and sustenance, they are shed every six to ten weeks but always from alternate sockets. The amount of venom delivered depends
on the size of the prey. Defensive strikes never deliver as much. Indeed, a high percentage of strikes on humans are dry, i.e., venom-less. The venom itself is potent and can contain up to twenty-five different enzymes, making it "the
most complex and dangerous natural poison in the world."
Rattlesnakes have often been used in religious ceremonies and tourist attractions. Rattlesnake roundups in Georgia and some other states are severely depleting the number of
snakes and some herpetologists suspect the snakes may become extinct.

Ophiolatreia (worship of snakes) was common in Greece and Egypt. Usually they represented evil, but the Hopi Indians used them as part of rain ceremonies. Eastern indians practiced avoidance, and tobacco was considered a
snake repellent. Christian snake handling cults — having little political power, I suppose they can rightly be called cults — base their belief on Mark 16:17-18. They originated in Tennessee — also home of the great "monkey trial,"
which tells us a great deal — in 1906 with George Hensley, who died at age seventy from the bite of an eastern diamondback. Membership in these groups peaked at the end of the forties. Considering how the snakes are provoked
during the course of the services, the number of actual bites and deaths has been remarkably low, only about 75 fatalities in the last ninety years.

Rubio is an amateur in the best and original sense of the word. He has taught himself everything he could about these marvelous animals and become perhaps one of the world's foremost photographers of the snakes. The illustrations
are striking!