There were two days of rattlesnake encounters this particular summer when Kazbek was only six months old - the following happened on Day 2:
After Kazbek's first encounter with an unseen (but definitely heard) rattler under the storage shed...in fact, exactly 24 hours later...we had another exciting evening with the wildlife. My sister had just gotten home from work, and we were inside the house, engaged in a discussion about something. It had gotten progressively darker and darker as we spoke, so when the dogs outside began yapping, we couldn't see anything in the gloom and ignored them.
Kazbek was in the house, and suddenly joined the commotion with his heavy baying, throwing himself against the closed kitchen door. (Body-slamming the door is not my favorite thing that Kaz does, but he only does it when there is definitely something provoking him.) In response to Kazbek's alarm, I opened the wooden back door, and was greeted with the weird sound of the hiss of a broken gas main. This always means a big, angry rattlesnake. Fortunately, a heavy security screen door stood between the rattler on the doorstep and myself, my sister and a livid Kazbek, inside the kitchen. As I opened the kitchen door inward, our little white Akbash mix and rescue, Lily, was barking hysterically but a safe distance from the snake. However, my mere presence at the door both emboldened and disturbed her, and she rushed forward to pitch battle. I shouted at her back to back off. She seemed to recognize the panic in my voice, and moved back again, still barking.
Meanwhile, the incessant hiss of the rattler drove Kazbek, still a baby at about six months of age, into a complete rage. His deep and furious bark was relentless. He positioned himself strategically between us and the door, standing about four feet back from the screen itself.
The night light, a motion detector more sensitive to rain and moths than to any action on the porch, had thus far refused to come on. In the pitch dark outside, it was impossible to see or locate the rattlesnake, but its incessant rattling "buzz" sounded as if it were coming from right beside the door. At last, the motion detector came on. The cool, white, moth-littered light revealed a huge Western Diamondback rattler coiled on the Welcome mat; it's "diamonds" were faintly outlined with whitish scales, but otherwise it was black and dusky as the night. My sister had just crossed the doorstep and that Welcome mat a scant 15 minutes before, in semi-darkness, and this knowledge made my blood run cold, knowing that the majority of people bitten by snakes have stepped on them unaware.
I had called Emergency-911 by this time, and, fortunately, the dispatcher was very understanding. A fire truck was dispatched to our address immediately. In the meantime, there were still three loose, anxious, barking dogs in the yard -- separated from the safety of the house by the presence of the snake -- so my sister decided to jump out the kitchen window - still in her business day finery. She hurried around the house to a separate entrance to the yard (away from the porch), and, with some difficulty, she managed to cajole the loose dogs into the barn.
Kazbek's constant threatening roar throughout all this action managed to keep the snake coiled on the porch, ready to strike; thus, it had had no opportunity to slither into the night. The firemen at last arrived to dispatch the snake, which proved to measure more than three feet in length, and as thick as a woman's arm. We congratulated and thanked the firemen, who soon left. I couldn't stop petting and praising Kazbek, not only for his recognition and fearless response in guarding us against the threat and danger of the snake, but also for his wonderful fortitude. Kazbek DID NOT QUIT his close up and personal threatening of the rattler until all danger was gone. While the screen did provide him protection, his own primitive instincts gave him the range wherein he was unlikely to easily be struck, and he could not know himself - in his puppy mind - that the screen did provide some protection. Therefore, he had to reach within himself for instinct and courage, and stand in front of his "sheep" keeping us back and placing himself between us and harm.
At last, all was quiet on the western front. But now it was time to retrieve the three dogs still locked in the barn, so I grabbed the flashlight and, nervous as a 10 cup a day coffee drinker, cautiously stepped into the backyard.
I walked a dozen feet alone, in and out of shadow, my weak flashlight (the kind that horror movie virgins always use to check out suspicious noises) just didn't cut it. My nerves were shot, so I went back and got Kaz to escort me to the barn. He was happy to join me, trotting gaily ahead into the dark. As he neared the barn, he began a thunderous barking. For a millisecond I thought -- hoped -- that the big fellow was only woofing at his dog pals inside the barn, but there was something about the way Kazbek barked. I shone the flashlight which revealed him leaping straight up into the air, like a cat, all the while staring at the ground and barking that deep resonant bark. Once again I heard the HISSSS of a rattler. Invisible in the gloom, it obviously lay curled right in front of the barn door - right where I was heading, in my open-toed, rubber flip-flops and with only a weak little flashlight to guide the way. I shouted for Kaz, and he left the rattler and came back to my side. We ran back to the house, and soon Emergency-911 had again dispatched a fire truck. While waiting for the men, I took a better flashlight and went back to the area where Kaz had spotted the snake. In the short time it had taken to use the phone, the rattler had escaped and hidden itself in the dark.
Trusting now in Kaz' 6th sense about pit vipers (where did he get it - no such snake exists in his native Russia?), I brought him to the spot where the second rattler had lain, and told him to "find it." At the cue word, Kazbek put his head down and appeared to begin to track the snake, taking a line from the barn to the fence, jumpy as a cat on a hot tin roof, but resolute. At the fence, the trail ended but Kazbek sniffed up and down one length of the fence and I felt sure the snake had escaped that way.
When the firemen returned to help us, I dared not tell them that only my DOG had seen the rattler - and how would I tell them that my untrained, eight month old puppy had then "tracked" the snake to a place where it apparently escaped underneath the fence?
Instead of telling the whole story, I simply stated -- with conviction -- that the rattler had slipped through the fence, and pointed out to the men the route the snake had taken (as shown to me by my dog). A couple of the guys scoured the yard carefully, while another group went behind the fence to take a look. Within a couple of minutes they had found the second rattlesnake -- a two-footer, this time -- which they dispatched.
For the third time in 24 hours, Kazbek had held the fort against some mighty agitated pit vipers. The first snake, he had harangued and threatened the night before, so consistently and so hard that the snake had left the yard and its bed under the garden shed. Then Kaz' resounding bark had kept the huge black diamondback so disturbed on the porch that it was unable to uncoil and either hurt the other dogs or slip into darkness only to return at another time and endanger us all. Finally, had Kazbek not been walking point that night as I went out to the barn, I would have stumbled right into a third rattler and surely been bitten.

Deborah C. O'Brien
© July 1998

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