Speaking of large rattlesnakes....
Years ago when Connie and I were kicking around in that Murdock area looking for snakes, I spotted some sheet tin a bit off of the road, further back in those abandoned mazes of roads, so we parked the Bronco and I grabbed my Furmont Stump Ripper and headed over there while Connie decided to sit this one out and remain in the truck.
Where I was headed was only a few moment trek from the Bronco, so when I got there I lifted up a good sized piece of tin and ducked down to quickly take a peek underneath. And found myself face to face with a monster of a diamondback. Yikes! I certainly was not expected that! But he (just guessing at the sex) didn't seem particularly offended, and from the way he had coiled up underneath the tin, it seemed apparent to me that it would have been a real acrobatic move on his part to land a strike in my direction . So I carefully lowered the tin again and ran back to the Bronco to grab my camera. I asked Connie if she would help me get some pictures of a rattlesnake I found, since it would be easier if she held up the tin from the back while I took the photographs from the front.
So she gets on the opposite side of the tin and using my snake hook, lifted up the tin while I moved in for some photographs. Honestly I got pretty close to that rattlesnake, but Connie couldn't see a thing of it from her angle holding up the tin. When I got done taking the photos, I asked her if she wanted to see the snake. Sure she did. So we traded places, and when she was in front of the tin, I then lifted it up so the rattlesnake would be exposed. All I saw was Connie doing an olympic quality leap backwards while calling out some sort of unflatteringly descriptive names and curses.
Come to find out that because she couldn't see the animal, and from as close as I appeared to be getting to it while taking the photos, she just assumed that it was just a little tiny rattlesnake under that tin. So when I lifted that tin, she found herself facing one heck of a jumbo sized monster. She obviously did not notice that it would have been rather difficult for this guy to launch a strike, but then again, she obviously was in no mood to analyze that situation for long. Now this WAS an exceptionally large rattlesnake, and as I mentioned I was pretty surprised myself. If I had laid it's head on my open hand, you wouldn't have been able to see much of my hand and fingers. I have no idea how long it was, but it was certainly one very chunky looking animal. And Connie was just in her sandals, so I'm sure she felt that her feet and toes were extremely exposed, which certainly helped her to execute that 10 point leap backwards. Yeah, I guess in the excitement of finding that magnificent animal, it just slipped my mind to warn her of exactly what she was going to see when I lifted that tin up.
Of course, it took a VERY LONG while before I heard the end of that from her......... Come to think of it, it was a very long time before she even started speaking to me again.