"BenignVanilla"
wrote:

"Tsu Dho Nimh" wrote in message
.. .
snip
The sound of a rattlesnake can FREEZE a human even if they have
never heard it before. As a child, I was rockhopping down a
talus slope in AZ and heard a very menacing sound coming from
under the rock I had just landed on.

snip

We stumbled on to one sunning himself near a crag we wanted to climb
Virginia. We watched him for a few, and then he slid off the path and let us
pass, nary a rattle.

Had you jumped onto a rock directly over his head, he would
have rattled. My parents took a picture at Mesa Verde and didn't
notice the rattlr under the bush untilafter the pictures were
developed. He was a few feet offthe trail, snoozing.

Tsu

--
To doubt everything or to believe everything
are two equally convenient solutions; both
dispense with the necessity of reflection.
- Jules Henri Poincaré