[PRCo] Re: Interurban track remains/ row

[Fred Schneider]

Damnit, John.  Don't try to scare him.  I've spent a lot of time photographing
the trains in the deserts of Arizona and California and I've never see one.
Don Duke told me he once saw one slither out from under a boulder on which he
was sitting in Cajon Pass, and decided it was prudent not to move until the
snake moved out of striking range.  I heard one buzzing at me at the east end
of the Milwaukee Road's tunnel through the Continental Divide east of Avery,
Idaho ... shared the skit out of my wife ... don't know why, we were in the car
and it was outside.  Did I actually see a rattler?  Only in zoos.

But the best story I can tell about them follows.  I had been walking in the
Angeles National Forest ... went up the back way.  I was on a trail from which
I could see the old Pacific Electric right-of-way to Mount Lowe.  (The old
Alpine Tavern was hidden in a ravine that I couldn't see).   Never saw any
reptilian creatures.  When I got back to the ranger's station, I mentioned that
I'd walked for two hours with the telephoto lens on hoping I might have been
able to get a picture of a rattler.  Reply was, "Too cool today.  But they were
all out Saturday."  I asked him how he knew that they were all out on Saturday
and I suggested, "Snakebites?"  He answered in the affirmative.  I asked how
did he account for so many snakebites.  Answer: "Crazy people.  They come up
here from Los Angeles and pick up the snakes.  Mojave rattler has the most
toxic venom of all rattlers.  Fortunately we can airlift the idiots down to a
hospital in Pasadena in fifteen minutes."   Maybe they've been watching to many
Aussie crazies on the boob tube.  The only thing I got out of that day was a
hell of a sunburn and a trip to Sears to buy a hot so it wouldn't get any
worse.

John F Bromley wrote: