A lot, including Pluto

Sheesh. Today started with Chiron sextiling Mercury exactly while I graciously declined an unwanted invitation to dinner this weekend and moved on to Mercury trine the Midheaven at midday while I bashed out emails like IMs to several people at once and emptied out a lot of my mailbox. Late afternoon, as it got cooler, with Mercury trining the ascendant, I went outside to transplant a couple of cabbage plants into the wooden box on the back patio and heard a funny buzzing noise. Standing up and turning around, I did a bit of a double-take as I found myself almost nose to snout with this guy curled up under

the artemisia on the ground behind the rock wall slightly above my waist level. My first thought was camera, and with my super zoom lens I was able to get the above from about two feet away. Next thought was what kind is it, and I emailed the image to a friend here with the subject line Do You Know What This Is? I'd just hit the Send button when a friend from New York called, and when I sent the image to him he immediately said he thought it was a rattler because of the diamond shaped head and the, er, black thing that's his tail where the rattle is.

I do sometimes wonder if my medication level needs adjusting as my next move was to grab the camera again and rush out to take more pictures, waiting patiently with my arms propped on the rock wall until he stuck his tongue out for me.

At this point the person I'd originally emailed called to tell me to kill it, and if I couldn't do it myself (!) to call a neighbor. How would he kill it, I said. With a gun, he answered. Oh yeah right, I thought, that's just what I need, bloody smattered rattlesnake all over the windows of the computer room, and I then remembered the local wildlife rescue man who has a slightly more compassionate approach to unwanted critters. I've called him several times before with city person wildlife questions, and he's unfailingly civil in the face of my embarrassing ignorance and calm, patient and never condescending in his responses. Please email with any questions you may have about rattlesnakes' diet, preferred location and venom production.

His suggestion was for me to put a large trash can on its side and to gently poke the black-tail (as I now knew it was called) until it slithered into the trash can, at which point I was to up-end the can, secure the lid, load it into my car,  take it a long way away up into the forest and then let it out, presumably hoping it had no internal GPS system, map or compass. He'd come and help me, he said, but he was out of town, so if I didn't think I could do it myself I should call a friend for help.

Thinking that any friend I called for help with rattlesnake removal would happily relinquish that status in a heart beat, I remembered that the husband of the sister of the woman who rented the house last year was a Search and Rescue volunteer, admittedly of lost or injured humans, not rattlers (as us that know them call them), but any port in a storm and all that, and in ten minutes Marc arrived with his vacationing brother, Marc armed with a long wooden stick and his brother with a broom. After a long and reasoned discussion of options, (one of which, offered by a retired botanist Marc called for advice, was to secure the snake's head with a forked stick, pick it up by the neck right behind the immobilized head and throw it into the trash can, which we decided we would do the next time I have a rattler on the back patio) I went up to the adobe and retrieved an old three-panelled fireplace screen while Marc got the trash can and put it on the ground, open end facing the rattler, who had obligingly remained coiled up exactly where I first saw him throughout all this.

I positioned myself behind the rattler holding the screen, Marc stood at the closed end of the trash can holding a long pole, and his brother stood between us, broom at the ready. One poke with the stick and the rattler made a smart left turn, headed for Marc's brother, who leapt back about two feet, and disappeared completely under the artemisia, only to reappear almost immediately slithering past my left foot and attempting to burrow into the rock wall. My reputation for sang-froid cemented (Mars in Scorpio trining natal Mars, perhaps?) and the rattler clearly visible, it was relatively easy for Marc to poke him into the trash can, and once the lid was on and hinged in place, the next step was what to do with him, or rather, where to do it.

The other side of Bear Mountain seemed to be the answer, and while I'd have been perfectly happy to take him myself, it was decided I should have a passenger so, should rattler escape, there would be two of us in the car flailing around in panic instead of one, sang-froid going only so far. I could go on with this and describe how Marc's brother and I took a wrong turn and lost Marc, who was leading the way, and how it was getting dark in the middle of the forest with no cell phone reception, and how when I did get service I called Marc's house to get his phone number and got his brother's wife on the phone to her daughter in Vermont who asked me for my phone number so she could call back, and how I didn't know my phone number because I never use my cell, but there's not much point, really. I'm already home safe and sound with the Sun not due to sextile Pluto for another ninety minutes, by which point I shall probably have been asleep for an hour. I'll need to get a good night's rest as Saturn sextiles Pluto exactly at 9:00 am Saturday morning, so I'll need to be alert and on the look-out for the next deadly critter. It's different out here.