An old surveyor and longtime reader of this space stopped by Saturday afternoon to shoot the breeze. A bit of a character, he’s always welcome.

He started right in on the Red Sox, especially Panda Bear, whom he calls “Fatso,” then said he’s more interested in the Patriots’ draft and even had the date memorized. Not bad for an octogenarian closing in a 90.

Then came the subject he most wanted to address.

“What the hell is wrong with those people wanting to stock rattlesnakes at the Quabbin? Do they need their heads examined?”

“Well, you’re not alone in that opinion,” was the response. “Truthfully, though, it probably won’t change things much. No one will likely ever know the difference.”
“That may be true, but it still makes no sense to me.”

Mind you, we’re talking about a man who has legitimate reasons for his feelings about poisonous snakes. In 40-some years as a land surveyor on jobs from northern Maine to Maryland, he had some close calls over the years. And he didn’t hesitate a millisecond to engage in eager conversation about his encounters with dangerous snakes as a member of crews cutting line with machetes, pounding hubs into the ground and running traverse and cross-section detail through mountainous wilderness plots spanning the Northeast from the early 1950s into the ’80s.

A South Deerfield native, he had heard childhood tales of poisonous snakes and where they lurked but had managed to avoid confrontation during a foot-free childhood that included many a trek up the two Sugarloafs. No, never a rattlesnake or copperhead sighting from his boyhood adventures. Not a one. Just cautionary adult tales planted in his consciousness to assure that he was always alert when exploring the hills and dales.

That all changed as an adult, when he went to work as a land surveyor, working on projects like the MassPike between Westfield to Russell, where snake-infested Mt. Tekoa loomed large to the north, or Lane’s Quarry along the West Springfield/Westfield border, and especially during extended work in the early 1960s laying out peripherals related to Camp David, the famous presidential retreat built 62 miles northwest of the White House in the 1930s and situated in the snake-infested Catoctin Mountain Park in rural western Maryland.

“We had to wear special high boots when we worked there,” he said, “and sightings of poisonous snakes were not rare. In fact, I recall a laborer getting bitten not far from me and getting very sick.

Of course, he also remembers the time he was working somewhere in western Massachusetts — for the life of him, he can’t recall where — when a trusted crew-member he always called “Old Fred” intervened in a memorable incident.

“I was walking along through the woods with Old Fred behind me and I unknowingly walked right past a snake I didn’t see,” he said. “Well, Old Fred — he had a hunter’s eye in the woods — touched me on the shoulder and said, pointing down with the tip of his machete, ‘Hey, look what you just walked right past — copperhead!’

“Sure enough, right there, a foot away from the point of his machete was a three-foot snake in an aggressive pose. You’re more apt to get bitten by a copperhead, you know, because they don’t warn you with a rattle. Old Fred took care of the problem. With the flick of his wrist, he cut that snake’s head off right there within five feet of me.”

Another time, having laid out an underground mountain communications chamber outside of Clear Springs, Md., blasting crews were hollowing out the bed rock with dynamite when they disturbed a thickly populated nest of rattlesnakes, blowing many living, squirming, angry rattlers atop a large, flat, warm bedrock shelf. The fellas were used to dealing with such problems, and their methods speak to the reason why Eastern timber rattlers are now an endangered species in these parts, where they were likely for years attacked with similar lethal fury.

“They doused the stone surface with gasoline and set the ledge aflame,” he said, “killing them all.”

You don’t have to wonder whether rattlers uncovered during similar construction projects here in the Pioneer Valley and elsewhere in New England were likewise burned from existence. It was undoubtedly done here before the snakes became protected by law.

“When we told the story to the guy who owned the place where we ate every night, he didn’t seem surprised,” said the surveyor. “Apparently, it was common practice. Plus, he told us a story about a wildfire up there up on that mountain, when people could hear the rattlesnakes rattling as they fled down the hill toward water.”

Who knows whether that’s fact or fiction? You be the judge.

Back closer to home in the Pioneer Valley, our aged surveyor source said he didn’t recall seeing a rattler, per se, when working on the MassPike project “around that bridge at Woronoco,” but he did remember being warned often to be wary of rattlers, then in early autumn finding the shed skin of a large rattlesnake in a cement drainage trench along the edge of the interstate. It served as a visual reminder of the potential dangers lurking around any sunny, stony corner, and, of course, gave the fellas the heebie-jeebies every time a twig snapped across the back of their legs or a dead prostrate branch two or three inches thick lay across a path they were clearing through brush.

Then there was the time not far away, our source remembered, when a worker at the aforementioned Lane Quarry went into the brush to answer Mother Nature’s call, come running out terrified, grabbed a long, heavy stick and came back out with a limp four-foot rattlesnake dangling from the end of it.

“In the field, we were always on the lookout in rocky, upland terrain, plus around stone walls, which snakes seem to like,” he said, “especially down in Pennsylvania and Maryland. Stonewalls were always a concern down there, but I would guess you’d find snakes in stonewalls here, too, if you went looking.”

One other place our surveyor friend remembers for its poisonous snakes was his brother-in-law’s secluded, wooded estate in the middle Hudson Valley Town of Kingston, N.Y. There, he said, copperheads were not an uncommon sight in the woods and probably still aren’t, be it along the dirt roads or even around the house, where one of his brother-in-law’s Irish setters was once bitten. When his brother-in-law asked him if he’d survey the perimeter of his property some weekend to mark the corners, he promised to do so, “but only around wintertime when the snakes were hibernating.”

As indisputable as it is today that local rattler and copperhead populations have diminished over the past 50 years, the fact is that they were here and were not at all uncommon in the not-so-distant past. Now, given the fact that the Pioneer Valley is indeed warming with the rest of the planet, how long before the return of the vipers with or without MassWildlife’s proposed reintroduction initiative at the Quabbin Reservation?

Who knows? Maybe rattlers will find their way to Mt. Zion on their own.

It’s spring, signs everywhere.

Trout-stocking trucks from the Connecticut Valley and Western Wildlife districts are rolling through Recorder country, depositing fresh, lively, colorful brookies, browns and rainbows from Pioneer Valley hatcheries at Montague, Sunderland, Palmer and Belchertown. No word on this week’s schedule, but ponds like Cranberry in Sunderland and Puffers in North Amherst have already been visited by Valley District trucks at least once thus far. Meanwhile, the Western District has thrown caution to the wind and stocked the upper Deerfield River from Florida to Buckland for Mohawk Trail anglers.

The upper Deerfield usually gets stocked before the lower because, once a fish is placed in the lower river below Station No. 2, just above Bardwell’s Ferry connecting Conway and Shelburne, there’s nothing to stop them from being washed into the Connecticut River and out of play for Deerfield River anglers. Of course, that’s the bad news. The good news is that many trout seeking refuge from spring high-water events also find their way into popular fishing tributaries like the Bear and South Rivers and Dragon and Hawks brooks, where they can thrive and offer wooded pursuits for hip-booted stream fishermen or, then again, find their way back into the Deerfield once the water settles down.

So, don’t assume that spring flooding always removes stocked trout from the lower Deerfield. That’s a myth. Once acclimated, stocked trout can find refuge and remain available in the river system throughout the fishing season by moving in and out of the better tributaries. And don’t think you can just forget about these fish even if thy do wind up in the Connecticut, where they never stay long. Those fish stay in play by finding their way into tributaries, some of them small “unstocked” brooks feeding the Connecticut, such as boyhood South Deerfield streams like Clapp and Sugarloaf brooks, longtime secret little gems to which big trout can find their way. Particularly enticing for anglers are the wide, deeply-incised outflows, which dig back into riverside terrain from the Connecticut riverbank.

Expect stocking crews to stick to their longtime pattern of hitting the lakes and ponds first, soon after ice-out, then the smaller upland brooks, and finally the larger streams, such as Fall and Sawmill rivers, and major rivers like the Deerfield, Millers, Green and North. The spring-stocking schedule always ends Memorial Day Weekend, after which hatchery managers assess their inventory for the potential of one additional bonus stocking of surplus trout, which sometimes includes brood-stock lunkers for the grand finale.

Meanwhile, on the wild turkey front, our state game bird of the first Plymouth Colony Thanksgiving feast many centuries ago had a splendid mild winter with lots of food on the ground for the taking due to minimal snow-cover and plentiful hard and soft fall mast crops. A credentialed hilltown spotter reported just Tuesday that large flocks of turkeys congregated and stayed in the hardwoods over the winter, taking a mix of bountiful nuts and berries from the forest floor. This natural, nutritious food kept the birds healthy, and the shallow snow eliminated the threat of deep, powdery snow mortality that occurs when the big birds fly down and get mired. Either that or, knowing what awaits them in the deep, fluffy snow, wise old birds of both sexes have been known to remain in the roost too long, weakening quickly in the cold due to lack of food, and perish. There should have been none of that this winter, and spring hunters will be the beneficiaries, with many big, mature toms in full strut for the taking by veteran hunters who know what they’re doing.

—

It seems that anthropologist/archaeologist Dr. Peter A. Thomas received undeserved credit here last week for work performed at what was referred to as WMECO/West Springfield. Thomas said he had no knowledge of any such project and definitely had no hand in it if it was conducted. This space was told long ago by a trusted source that, thankfully, Dr. Thomas had led an archaeological salvage project at a deep-history construction site facing obliteration around the old 17th-century Pynchon Plantation of Agawam. Well, last week’s mention here was the first Thomas had heard of that supposed salvage project. Oh well. It would have been easy to double-checked with him before publishing it as one of his Pioneer Valley accomplishments. Dr. Thomas needs no embellishments for an already impressive list of accomplishments.

—

Roger “Hezekiah” Ward of Buckland chimed in last week on the Quabbin rattlesnake-stocking controversy:
“I have seen snakes traverse water at speeds probably faster than they could travel on land. If I was the one who had to make the decision about the Quabbin island, I would say no in the interest of public safety.”
Not through, he then offered this little tidbit:
“Some time ago, around Nov. 1, 1966, I took the forest-fire power wagon from Mohawk State Forest to a fire in the town of Leverett, where we fought a fire on a mountain that was called Rattlesnake something or other. I can’t remember the exact name but believe it was listed as Rattlesnake something on the topo maps as well. Later, when talking with Leverett natives, everybody was familiar with the rattlesnake name. Perhaps there’s an old-timer who could help you, but if LEVERETT IS ANYTHING LIKE BUCKLAND, old-time natives are an endangered species.”
Well, Heze, no need for an old-timer on this one. I’d bet my Sweet 16 side-by-side you’re referring to Rattlesnake Gutter, an area of Leverett passed through by the Sawmill River and Rattlesnake Gutter Road.

Think of them as tasty leftovers from a recent meandering phone conversation with state Deer Project Leader David Stainbrook about the 2015 preliminary deer harvest. Nothing big. Just a few interesting observations about deer behavior gleaned and stored for future reference after delving into a peripheral discussion about a Penn State deer-collaring research project Stainbrook led a grad student.

An indelible lesson learned was that even when researchers knew deer were very near, the stoic hoofed critters were nearly invisible and impossible to find bedded in brushy undergrowth. Although Stainbrook didn’t attempt to quantify what percentage stayed put and what percentage fled, or the buck-to-doe ratio of those that stayed, he came away from his project amazed once again by the uncanny ability of deer to blend into their habitat, not to mention their bold nerve to ride out close encounters by remaining still and smartly alert while allowing human intruders to pass by. Just a long honed survival skill.

Stainbrook said some bucks were gone well before anyone could get close, but they quickly returned to the vacated area anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours later. The rest hung tight, hidden, and let the researchers pass right by.

“Deer blend in so well when still; they were amazingly tough to see, even when we knew they were right there with big black collars on their neck,” Stainbrook said in a discussion spinning off local hunters’ perception that our local deer herd is shrinking, contrary to MassWildlife claims. “It did not appear to be based on individual deer — e.g., skittish deer versus deer that stay put — but rather on other factors like weather conditions. It depended on how noisy we were and how well they could sneak out unheard and unseen, but also how close we got to them, and how noisy we were.

“One interesting thing I learned by investigating bedding sites from some of the mature bucks was that they selected sites that were nearly impossible to sneak up on without them seeing or smelling you. That is likely why they lived to adult age and why we hunters have such a tough time meeting up with mature bucks that show up on our trail cameras.”

So chalk up this tidbit of information as just a little food for thought for hunters who have likely walked right past many a wise, wary, confidently bedded trophy buck that chose to hide rather than run. More often than not, the strategy works in the deer’s favor, especially during coordinated drives involving many hunters working in unison with walkie-talkies.
Then again, how many times have you heard successful hunters tell their tales of shooting monster, wall-mounted bucks that they discovered curled up at the base of a gnarly hemlock tree in a damp, dark swamp during a windy, driving rainstorm, or, then again, standing motionless behind a clump of smallish trees that make them practically invisible.

It’s why experts implore deer hunters to move slowly, make little noise and always diligently scan the area through which you’re passing with optimal care and focus. Sometimes the only detectable clue of a deer’s presence is a slight flick of an ear or slow head movement. And even then, a hunter must be efficient to quickly shoulder a gun and hit his or her mark before the deer springs up and is, in a flash, gone.

Time to clean out the desktop pile of gathered snail-mail and email printouts, all containing interesting comments from readers who reacted to topics covered here recently, particularly Quabbin rattlesnakes, which created quite a stir, plus analysis pertaining to the recent preliminary Massachusetts deer harvest.

It gets better. We’ll also take a look at comments from a man who, after reading about the rattlesnakes, wanted to report numerous highway moose sightings that have crossed his path while passing through Quabbin Country. Then, last but not least, comments from an amusing letter to the editor from “The Pied Piper of Quabbin,” who didn’t make it to print because of the unacceptable pseudonym. We’ll let that slide here.

All of the comments have from the start been worth sharing. Yet, till now, there’s been no way to work them into previous narratives. So, here we go with a plateful of feedback leftovers from four readers.

– – –

Let’s start with Kathy-Ann Becker of Wendell, acclaimed author of the 2013 novel “Silencing The Women: The Witch Trials of Mary Bliss Parsons,” the 17th-century Northampton wife of William Pynchon’s fur-trader extraordinaire Joseph Parsons, from whom we both descend.

Though we have in the past discussed our genealogical profiles, this latest string of emails pertained to an early Pioneer Valley rattlesnake incident she learned of while scouring primary records to glean helpful information for her novel.

She prefaced her little tidbit of 17th-century history folklore with, “Here is written testimony (misspellings unchanged) from the case of Mary Bliss Parsons that pertains to rattlesnakes,” dated Aug. 18, 1656, testified on oath before William Houlton and Thomas Bascum:

“George Alexander, Samuel Adams and Goody Webb testifieth that they were present when the ox of William Hannum was stung with the rattle snake and they did notice nothing but what might come to pass in an ordinary way that thy killed the rattle snake.”

Then, in further under-oath testimony before Elizur Holyoke, Hannum recalled, “… going to Windsor (Conn.) with my oxen and cart and about 4 mile from our town (Northampton) as I was going whether my ox hung out his tongue or whether he went to eat for it fell out that a wrattle snake bitt him on the tongue and there he died. These things doe sometimes run in my mind that I cannot have my mind from this (Parsons) Woman that if she be not right this way she may bee the cause of these things, though I desire to look at over the rulinge hand of God on all.”

Four miles south of Northampton would have placed this unfortunate 17th-century incident at a location known to this day as a rattlesnake lair — the area surrounding Mt. Tom.

– – –
Moving from vipers to large quadripeds — namely moose — this little gem from daily Orange-to-Springfield commuter Mark LaBier, to whom moose sightings along Route 202 have become common:
“I have been driving to Springfield for 20 years and have seen hundreds of moose, usually mothers and little ones. Today, traveling south through Pelham, there were two huge bulls, one in the left lane, one in the right lane, first time ever I was scared of hitting them. Is this normal?

Hmmmm? Not sure how to answer that question.

“Also, if there is any (future) talk of (mountain lions), I have seen one chasing a coyote in Orange right by the Mattawa exit, and I have seen so many different animals and birds of prey that it makes the drive awesome.”

– – –

Next up, responding to last week’s column about the preliminary 2015 deer harvest and unconfirmed suspicion by hunters that the deer population took a serious hit due to winter mortality last year. Questioned about that possibility last week, state Deer Project Leader David Stainbrook said MassWildlife looked into it but its investigation bore no fruit.

Well, get a load of this information from reader Jason MacLean, who wrote:

“I started hunting Zone 11 about three years ago, and once I finished graduate school started hunting more seriously. Scouting this past summer for the upcoming fall season, my buddy and I found 11 winter/coyote kills (it’s tough to tell the difference). My friend shot a deer this year during archery season and by the time he climbed down from his tree stand, a coyote was already chewing on the deer’s leg. Bold, huh?”

Yes. Bold indeed. Not surprising, though. Similar tales have been circulating for years among deer hunters beaten to mortally wounded deer by a coyote or coyotes.
MacLean wasn’t through. He also had this suggestion:

“We’re doing our best to hunt coyotes so more fawns survive to adulthood but we can hunt only Saturdays due to our work schedules,” he complained. “It would be awesome if MA was like RI, and coyote hunting was year round on private property with Sunday hunting permitted.”

Just a little food for thought.

– – –

Last but not least, back to snakes and The Pied Piper of Quabbin, who I hesitate to call a conspiracy theorist but can’t be far off.

Responding to the column titled “Rattler flap,” first mention here of MassWildlife’s proposal to stock endangered Timber Rattlers on a Quabbin island, the ole self-described Pied Piper harkens back to the 1930’s when, soon after wiping four rural towns from the face of the earth to supply clear, cold water for thirsty Boston, which had polluted its own, it was discovered that filling the large reservoir had sent rats scurrying to the uplands and out of harm’s way. To take care of this rat problem at farms and homes along the reservation’s periphery, the state apparently thought rattlesnakes would be a tidy solution. Well, according to The Pied Piper, the plan was indeed carried out under the assumption that the snakes would reduce the rat problem in a hurry then die off over winter, which didn’t go as planned.

According to The Piper, “Some of them … survived in pockets that are all (not coincidentally) adjacent to/near the Quabbin.”

But he wasn’t done yet. Uh-ah. He next decided to jump into the global-warming/climate-change debate as it relates to rattlesnakes and other wildlife.

“Now, if you make a scientifically based assumption that the climate of this area of New England, just like ‘global climate,’ is constantly cycling between warmer/cooler, and has been for all geologic time, you will realize that certain animal populations go up and down naturally, along with the temperature cycles and related factors, such as predator-prey cycles.

“Recently, MassWildlife declared a problem (extinction) and wants to solve it by introducing rattlesnakes to a Quabbin island to ‘protect and enhance endangered species in the name of conservation.’”

“Haha … back in the 1930s, they just wanted to get rid of rats. … Quite a commentary on how far societal ‘values’ have drifted from practical reality.

“I wonder if there are any rats on that Quabbin island — or anything else rattlers eat? And once the rattlers eat their fill, what’s next? Weekly speedboat CARE packages of snake food — at taxpayers’ expense?”

There’s more, but any idiot can see where it’s going.

Yes, that Quabbin-rattlers story is a tale that just keeps on giving. The folks who proposed it should have known it would get a little wild. It has. Not over yet.

The preliminary 2015 Massachusetts deer harvest of 9,910, released late last week by MassWildlife, was mediocre compared to recent harvests but not surprising from a western Massachusetts perspective.

Gone are the days when Franklin County woods most favorable to deer hunting were patrolled annually by eastern Massachusetts visitors hunting where their chance of success was greatest. Who would have ever dreamed that just the opposite would occur a generation or two down the road? Yes, that’s right, western Mass. meat hunters are now traveling to the eastern half of the state to supply venison for their freezers, be it during archery, shotgun, primitive-firearm or all of the above seasons. Why? Very simple. With higher deer densities confined in smaller patches of woods, the EMass success rates are far higher. Not only that, but in some deer-management zones, hunters can obtain multiple antlerless deer permits, and bowhunters have the luxury of setting up on deer that live along the edge of residential neighborhoods and are thus more accustomed to and less wary of human scent.

What it all adds up to is EMass numbers like those released last week. Although preliminary, the 70/30-percent harvest breakdown moving from the eastern to western halves of the state doesn’t figure to change much when state Deer Project Leader David Stainbrook releases his final report in the coming days That’s just the way it is nowadays, and the way it has been for at least 20 years. And don’t expect the current formula to change anytime soon. Not when the deer-management team intentionally manipulates its most effective deer-management tool — antlerless permits — to encourage hunting pressure eastward. That way, they can reduce suburban highway carnage where deer populations are densest while simultaneously building WMass numbers by drawing away hunters. Another factor in favor of reducing EMass deer densities is Lyme Disease, which is carried by deer ticks that can create serious health risks. Yes indeed, people living in suburban deer country have arrived at the point by now where they’ve developed tick and Lyme Disease phobia. Particularly vulnerable are children playing outside, and that doesn’t even address expensive Lyme Disease issues pertaining to dogs and other household pets as well as some livestock, especially horses.

As for the preliminary numbers, the eight Deer Management Zones in the western half of the state (Zones 1 through 7, with Zone 4 split into north and south) produced a total of 2757 kills during the archery (920), shotgun (1,347) and primitive-firearm (490) seasons. That represents a meager 30 percent of the statewide kill. Western hunters produced 22 percent of the archery harvest, compared to 33 percent of the shotgun and 31 percent of the primitive-firearm harvests. The eastern half of the state (Zones 8 through 14) registered 6,950 kills, which represents 70 percent of the statewide tally.

A harvest in the five zones west of the Connecticut River (Zones 1-4N/S) was 1,829, while the three zones bordered by the eastern bank of the river (Zones 5 through 7) produced 1,131 kills.

The state’s top harvests came from Zones 11 (2,141), 10 (1,920), and 9 (883). Combined, those three represent half of the statewide kill. Zone 11 is located in southeastern Massachusetts, mostly Bristol and Plymouth counties, Zone 10 is located in northeastern Massachusetts, all of Essex and some of Middlesex and Norfolk counties, and Zone 9 ventures into Worcester, Middlesex and Norfolk counties. So, in a general sense, the majority of our deer are now being killed in an area bordered on the west by Worcester and Leominster, on the northeast by the North Shore and in the southeast by Fall River and Plymouth … not by any stretch traditional deer country unless you want to go back to colonial times.

Franklin County hunters bemoaned the abundant hard and soft mast that made it nearly impossible to pattern deer last fall. And even when the fellas did “get into deer,” they had to kill them on the spot or expect their prey to vanish into a plethora of adjacent feeding areas where they weren’t pressured. Once those deer found a place to hunker down and feed, they’d stay when hunter pressure didn’t follow. And even when hunters did discover their new hideouts, they’d easily find another out of harm’s way.

In recent years, Stainbrook’s deer-management team has been trying to reduce deer densities in eastern Zones 10 through 14, stabilize them in central Zones 7 through 9, and increase them in Zones 1 through 6. In 2010, when the western Zones 2 through 7 had estimated deer densities of 12 to 15 per square mile, the management team wanted to up levels to 15 to 18. Last year, Stainbrook decided “to make the goals a more realistic 12 to 18 deer per square mile,” with some areas obviously holding more than others.

“It’s tough to gauge deer population in a place like Zone 4 North when I’m getting conflicting calls telling me there are too many deer in one area while people nearby are asking where all their deer went,” Stainbrook said. “We’re working on increasing populations out there but are up against it in old- and medium-growth forest,” where deer populations stay flat at best. Deer numbers grow quicker in areas where responsible logging is regularly occurring, leaving in its wake thick hardwood-regeneration-phase plots rich in winter browse.

“You can’t beat browse like sugar-maple saplings that sprout up after someone’s maple orchard is thinned out,” Stainbrook said. “We encourage landowners to keep their woodlots healthy and vibrant through forest-management plans that promote wildlife and healthy ecosystems.”

Many local hunters groused this past season about winter-kill and coyote predation as two major factors leading to a perceived reduced deer herd from 2014. Well, Stainbrook paid heed and did explore that speculative assessment by encouraging MassWildlife’s Connecticut Valley Wildlife District staff to investigate any reported deer carcasses. The problem is that wildlife biologists found no evidence of high winter mortality by starvation or predation during the difficult winter of 2014-15.

Another factor contributing to local hunters’ lack of success during the most recent deer season can be attributed to an ever-shrinking hunter pool in Franklin County woods that were once inundated with enthusiastic hunters moving deer throughout the day and improving everyone’s chance of seeing and/or killing them. Now, during a warm snowless season like the most recent, an ever-diminishing hunter pool can really be up against it to fill deer tags in habitats chock full of acorns, apples, grapes and you name it.

Potentially, an entirely different, more favorable scenario will unfold for deer hunters next fall. At least that’s what the folks most frustrated this past year are hoping.

Fact is, you never know. That’s a challenge sportsmen welcome, and can come away victorious with due diligence.

– – –

Longtime North Orange reader Micheal Moore (no, not that Michael Moore) chimed in with an interesting local rattlesnake tidbit related to the mention here of a controversial MassWildlife proposal to stock Timber Rattlers on a secluded Quabbin Reservoir island.

Moore recalls “reading in your (news)paper or the Brattleboro Reformer about a forest fire in West Brattleboro in 1958 or 1959, when thousands of Timber Rattlesnakes poured out of the ledges and spooked firemen. At this time, they were pretty sure they’d eradicated them from most of Vermont, so everyone was shocked. The point I took from the incident was that even though the woods were apparently full of them, no one seemed to see them, was bitten by them or had their dogs bitten.

“You suspect firemen from southern Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire must have hunted, fished or hiked those woods, and some of them probably even lived in the woods. Still, never a reported snakebite. I’ve since tried to find the article to no avail. Otherwise I’d forward it, but I’m thinking you’re likely handier than me at news research, so it might be something you could come up with.”

So far, after cursory Internet searches using various keyword combinations, no further information on the reported Brattleboro wildfire snakes. If anyone has recollection or documentation, please do respond to the email address listed below.

Meanwhile, in conversation with Recorder administrative assistant Diane Poirier Tuesday afternoon about the possibility of uncovering an old Recorder clipping about the snake-infested Brattleboro inferno, she immediately recognized the eerie tale learned as a child from her mother, a Gill native.

“Oh yeah, I remember that story,” she said with a little shiver. “It used to give us the heebie-jeebies.”

Hmmmm?

Further research necessary. Hopefully, it’ll bear succulent, salubrious fruit.

The deluge of timber rattlesnake comments continues following two weeks of discussion here about the state’s plan to establish a population of the venomous snakes on Mt. Zion, the large, isolated Quabbin Reservoir island and no-man’s land that’s off limits to humans.

MassWildlife’s justification for the proposal is that no reptile is slipping faster toward extinction than the timber rattler, and thus it’s high time to reverse that troubling trend. That said, state officials and proponents can’t with a straight face pretend they didn’t expect some sort of clamor once their plan leaked out. Yes, one had to presume the inevitability that a public largely unaware that it has always lived with rattlesnakes (and poisonous copperheads, for that matter) without ever having seen one was bound to react hysterically when apprised of the plan. And, yes, the public knee-jerk reaction was indeed negative. Oh what a stir it created. Poisonous snakes can do that to people, especially card-carrying ophidiaphobes, of which there are many. But let’s be honest. Fair or not, is there a more predictable target of public scorn than government agencies and their humble public servants? So let’s not act surprised by the unfavorable, accusatory buzz, particularly that emanating from the North Quabbin Region.

Put on your thinking caps and consider this: Given the fact that, no matter what the state says, there are already rattlesnakes top to bottom in the Pioneer Valley’s hills and dales, wasn’t it only a matter of time in these days of global warming and reforestation before rattlesnakes started coming back like bears and moose and many other formerly displaced wildlife species before them? Well, maybe not, considering the state disclosure that this endangered reptile is in serious peril due to road-kill and human contact. But it still makes sense that a warming climate would eventually open the possibility for more rattlers and copperheads, which have always been more prolific in warmer southern climes than here.

Anyway, most of the feedback this space has fielded was aimed at its own speculation that, despite claims that the last places of refuge for rattlers in the Bay State are located in Hampden and Hampshire counties and the Blue Hills area south of Boston, they are here, too, if you know where to search. Problem is that fewer and fewer folks are patrolling remote, difficult woods, particularly high, ledgy spines with snake-inviting talus slopes, shale beds and leg-breaking rock slides. It’s not the kind of terrain hikers gravitate to for summer frolic, in many cases because savvy upland explorers know that’s precisely where you’re most apt to encounter potentially dangerous serpents from the evil underworld.

Enough!

Now for a quick look at the more interesting feedback to cross this desk in the past week:

• The most detailed correspondence came by email late last Thursday night from a Colrain man. He wanted to tell a tale that unfolded before his very eyes “five or six years ago” while walking his two unrestrained dogs along the ridge-top trail following the Pocumtuck Ridge overlooking Wapping and Old Deerfield, south of the Eaglebrook School ski slopes. Yes, it was up there that he spotted something halfway onto the trail in front of him which caught his attention and turned out to be “the biggest snake I had ever seen in the wild,” estimated at “three or four feet long and very thick.” Because his dogs had already passed the viper without incident, the intrigued hiker decided to investigate closer, which may or may not be legal when dealing with an endangered species.

“It was elongated, motionless and brown,” he wrote. “In the back of my mind I wondered if maybe it was a rattler because I had heard of sightings on the Holyoke and Mt. Tom ranges. Like an idiot, I picked up a very long branch … and slowly extended it toward the snake, which promptly snapped into a tight coil with the tail rattling away at the center.”

He thought about reporting his sighting to MassWildlife but never got around to it because he figured it wasn’t all that rare.

• Earlier last Thursday, around 9 a.m., the home phone rang and it was a familiar Greenfield man who made it clear that he wanted to remain anonymous. An avid hiker who’s no stranger to upland terrain where rattlers are most apt to lurk, he himself has never encountered one but assumes he’s unknowingly passed many in his travels. He cited hiking trails on Mount Toby and Northfield Mountain as his two most likely haunts to contain rattlers, but was more interested in recounting the tales told many times by his mother, who grew up adjacent to what is today Greenfield’s Cherry Rum Plaza when it was undeveloped, wooded, swampy terrain during her childhood. She was fond of telling her sons of the rattlesnakes killed by neighborhood boys near a well-known den along the southern edge of White Ash Swamp. This den was associated with an outcropping of ledge overlooking Cherry Rum Brook. So, take it to the bank that even today, 70 years later, if someone seriously searched for rattlers along the ridgeline overlooking the Connecticut River, exploring also the steep, stony, eastern and/or western slopes of Rocky Mountain all the way from Canada Hill to Bears Den overlooking Bingville, there’s a good chance you could find a rattler.

• That bold prediction focused in Greenfield gains credence when you consider additional feedback that arrived last week about a mountain north of the state border, across the Connecticut River from Brattleboro, Vt., named here last week (Mt. Wantastiquet) as the 1961 site where a power-company laborer had killed a rattler displayed in Adams Donuts’ parking lot. Considering what correspondent Wendy Gaida reported about that site, it’s more than likely that rattlers still exist there. Ms. Gaida responded to last week’s column to report that she grew up in North Hinsdale, N.H., at the base of that mountain whose Indian name she had never heard until she was an adult. No, the only name she knew for Wantastiquet was the vernacular “Rattlesnake Mountain,” where her family forbade summer play due to rattlesnake fears.

“We were told there were thousands of rattlesnakes up there,” she recalled. “Everyone talked about it, including my grandparents, who also lived in North Hinsdale. They summered dry cows up there but never allow us on the mountain except in the winter.”

• The final feedback arrived from none other than a brother-in-law nestled into faraway idyllic retirement on a gentleman’s farm in Waldo County, Maine. Spurred by mention here last week of the ballad “On Springfield Mountain,” about a young Wilbraham man killed by a rattlesnake in 1761, he had a tale to tell from his childhood on Somers (Conn.) Mountain, a stone’s throw from the Springfield Mt. of Woody Guthrie ballad fame. He recalled capturing a snake and placing it in a grass-filled pickle jar as a curious 5- or 6-year-old Somers lad. That snake became part of the family, transmitting absolutely no bad vibes until neighbor Chan Hubble stopped by on his way through and the young lad decided he may want to see his captured pet, which he fetched and brought just outside the hilltop home’s front door.

“There, to my astonishment, upon looking into the jar, old Chan went absolutely wild, immediately screaming, ‘Copperhead!’ and dumping my little snake out on the ground in front of my mother and me. Once the snake was out, Mr. Hubble leaped unexpectedly into the air time and again — each time crashing down with his heavy boots on my precious little snake and bellowing, ‘Copperhead!’
“To this day, I have no idea what type of snake that was. And, of course, once old Chan was done dancing, which lasted the better part of a minute, a forensic scientist would have had trouble determining that the mass on the ground was a snake, never mind what type of snake it was.”

Oh yes, snakes sure can bring out the worst fears in a man, especially a committed ophidiophobe, which ole Chan Hubble may very well have been.

That young boy, now a trusted brother-in-law and devoted naturalist, got a close look at the reaction one can expect when such fears kick into high gear.

You can’t make it up.