The human response to potential risk is a complex thing. We can go to extremes – either of panic or denial. Resisting those extremes – being mindful of a hazard, while not being paralyzed by it – is challenging.

Rattlesnakes are far from the greatest West Texas hazard – we're at much greater risk behind the wheel of a vehicle. Even in the desert outback, dehydration and inclement weather are far greater dangers. But rattlers are real, and being snake-bit can be a harrowing, and, in rare cases, life-threatening experience. Educating ourselves is just good sense.

“I got to admit I got no use for rattlers,” Edward Abbey writes in a comic essay. “Like my daddy always sai... Hosted by for KRTS