Around here, you never know who’ll slither up on you

Indiana Jones hates snakes. So does a woman who moved to Coeur d’Alene from Kirkland, Wash. Rattlesnakes, in particular. That’s why she avoids Tubbs Hill. Yeah, I know, this doesn’t add up for anyone who has hiked Tubbs Hill. Or lived in the Coeur d’Alene area for any length of time, for that matter. No free-roaming rattlers exist here, unless they got loose after being imported. Sorta like recluse spiders. So where did the woman get the wild idea? Her veterinarian from Kirkland warned her about Coeur d’Alene rattlers. In particular, he cautioned her not to walk her dog on Tubbs Hill, an apparent hangout for rattler swingers. The woman was terrified. She mentioned her fears to real estate agent Thom George, who called Parks Director Doug Eastwood, who passed along the query in a memo to the City Council, after he stopped laughing, of course. He told Thom that the closest rattlers to Tubbs Hill might be on the west side of Spokane. (Huckleberries hears there might be a snake or two at Spokane City Hall. But that’s another story.) When I mentioned the rattler memo at Huckleberries Online, the gang chimed in that they’d seen an occasional garter snake in North Idaho. But no rattlers. Then commenter Cutter observed: “A few more global warming summers like this, a few more years of warm winters, and the nasty critters may just be expanding their territory. Sorta like Californians.” Be careful out there.