Few things worse than knowing you have a rattlesnake in the yard you can’t locate, like yesterday while Robbin was gardening with the cats and dogs about. She heard it buzz briefly in the vicinity of two kittens playing around a down, Palo Verde limb I’d been saving to address in cooler weather. For well over an hour, we hunted and poked the brush and weeds, cracks in rocks, and even watered all around, but to no avail.
Finally, after clearing the last of four Kubota loads of corded-up Palo Verde, Robbin spotted it making a tentative escape, but had it dispatched with birdshot before I could turn to get the pistol. It was fairly small, a good match for the fang marks our young tomcat packed for most of last month.
The Western Diamondback can be a very pretty reptile, not really looking for trouble, wanting only to be left alone. Rattlesnake and Palo Verde, not bad for a Sabbath—two birds with one stone.
drycrikjournal 
Did you really have to kill it? 😦 Like you say, they don’t look for trouble, and just want to be left alone.
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Intwined with ceremony and myth of the native Yokuts, the rattlesnake served as agent and spy for their underworld to keep the people good and honest. They did not kill them. Google: ‘Trahundun’. We respect the rattlesnake, and with the exception of places that people frequent, we leave them alone.
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Couldn’t you put a shock collar on them? An underground electric fence? lo lAgreed , you have to protect you and yours (animals included)
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