A chance encounter

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A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him --- did you not,
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,--
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.

- Emily Dickinson

This morning I made the acquaintance of this fellow, Crotalus oreganus helleri, the Southern Pacific rattlesnake, also called the black diamondback rattlesnake. We were walking on the main trail at Red Rock Canyon Park, heading back toward the ranger station, when I looked down at the path and saw him sunning himself on the pinky-mauve dirt, in just enough time to alter my pace and avoid stepping on him.

I leapt a couple yards away from him, and yelped out loud, startling [The Man I Love] and the dog.

The snake lifted his head, twisted like a wire cable, and turned back on himself, back through the weeds to the shelter of the brush, and the last thing I saw of him was the rattle at the end of his tail.

This is the second rattlesnake I've seen in 13 years of living here. The first one was a little one, and I heard his rattle before I saw him. This fellow never made a sound.