Snake dancing

[Prospector]

Living in Arizona we've seen our share of unusual stuff but this last one takes the prize. The other day my wife calls me over to the window: "Hey Hon, there's two snakes outside fighting" This I've never seen so I run over to have a look. Sure enough there are two adult rattlesnakes out at the periphery of our back yard, and acting mighty strange for sure, but that doesn't look like fighting - it looks more like some kind of ... mating ritual??

Gotta get pictures, so I grab the camera and run ... uh, tiptoe out there. Get to about 10 feet of them and they're still going at it and totally oblivious to my presence. Trying to get a bit closer got their attention so I pretty much stayed in back of that invisible line and took my pictures. This was one of the few times I wished I had a video camera.

Now I've seen plenty of rattlers in the wild but in all my years on this Earth I have never seen anything quite like this, which is why I wanted to share it with you. I hope the pictures below are visible, as I have had some problems in the past getting pictures to show up in my posts. In retrospect the pictures don't really do it justice. This 'dance' went on for at least 3 hours consisting of head bobbing, intertwining, neck craning and weaving (do snakes even have necks?), separating and reconnecting, trance like gazing, ... it was really quite the show.