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Rattlesnake turns up near Silt

Bobby MagillPost Independent Staff

SILT – John Legg says he’s building a house in a box canyon in the Dry Hollow area near Silt.But Legg isn’t the only one who’s found a home in the canyon. Legg caught a “pygmy” rattlesnake in a pile of wood near the house – a pretty rare find for this part of Colorado, he said, because few people see rattlesnakes in Garfield County. “Pygmy” rattlers, he claimed, are unheard of.”It’s really dangerous,” he said. Legg put the snake in a metal trash can until Colorado Division of Wildlife officer could come Friday to look at the snake. DOW was scheduled to retrieve and relocate the snake, said DOW spokesman Randy Hampton. But the snake isn’t that rare, and it probably wasn’t a “pygmy” rattler, Hampton said. What Legg likely found was a midget faded rattlesnake, the only rattlesnake common to the Western Slope – a snake that commonly lurks among the cliffs in Mesa County. It’s not quite as common to Garfield County, but “Silt country’s got them,” Hampton said, especially in a box canyon. “It’s not all that rare.”Midget faded rattlers grow no longer than two feet and, like most other rattlesnakes found in North America, are venomous. Hampton said another common Colorado rattler is the prairie rattlesnake, which can grow to be about four-feet long and lives along the Front Range.


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