This week at work, I had the opportunity to handle (with a stick) an amazing animal, a canebrake/timber rattlesnake. We had a training session to learn how to safely (for the animals and the visitors) deal with bears and snakes. The timber rattlesnake is decreasing in population throughout its range. This is mostly due to roads/traffic and partly due to their difficult life history. (Timber rattlesnakes do not reach maturity until nine years old, and females reproduce only once every four years – fasting sometimes for OVER A YEAR through hibernation cycles and internal incubation. And SO MANY animals eat young rattlesnakes) Timber rattlesnakes are the least aggressive species of snake in the region – although their last resort defense is nothing to take lightly.
Anyway, my brain got this image stuck in it after a visitor last week asked me why opossums don't get sick from eating "the poison." I tried to tell my brain I had no outlet for this image. But the ol' brain said, "You never set an update schedule or technically went on hiatus from Gelotology." Every fifth June? Could that be an update schedule?
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