Its a Western Pigmy Rattlesnake! Venomous!! Cool find though!

Ritchie

Thank you soooo much. Hubbie and I disagreed. I told him it was rattlesnake, but he pooh poohed me. It was about 12 inches long. No rattles yet, a juvenile maybe?

Not sure why it doesn't have any rattles. I would think since its about 12 in. it would have a few. Adults average 15 to 20 inches for these little guys. They may have possibly broken off. Are you sure there wasn't any? They usually have a tiny string of rattles that are barely audible. It sounds kind of like a bee buzzing. Anyhow, its definitely a pigmy rattler. Cool little snakes.

Don't know if you can tell from these pictures, but it did appear to have 1 tiny black rattle on it's tail. I'm betting it lost the others. My Dad used to call these "ground rattlers". I'm sad to say, that I did kill it. I normally try not to kill any snakes, but this one had taken up residence in my front shrub bed and my little dog had been sniffing and trying to get in there for a couple of days. After reading up on this species, it said these are territorial so it's probably a good thing that I did. Plus, that shrub bed is on my agenda to clean out, trim, and mulch in the next few weeks. I imagine it's bite could have been very nasty.

Pygmy rattlers can infict a very painful bite that requires hospitalization. My friend was bitten last year and spent the weekend in the hospital. He picked it up behind the head but left some wiggle room and got bitten on the finger! A pet can be killed by one.

For the future, your husband needs to learn some of the identifying features of many poisonous snakes. Your first image clearly shows eyes with vertical pupils and large pits on its snout.