I have been bitten 4 times over the last six weeks by the Western Black Legged Ticks (Ioxodes pacificus) in grass land on POST property in Montara, CA near the Farallone School. I was walking through weeds about 20 inches high in an area that is shaded in the mornings and is slow to dry out.

I had the last tick tested by the San Mateo Public Health Lab at 225 West 37th Ave. Luckily, they determined that tick was not carrying Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease. Today’s date is March 5, 2011. I will be avoiding this area now.

You and Betty were a spirited additions to our Lobitos Ridge hiking group, and everyone enjoyed your story about the commemorative oak. Since POST has already transferred Lobitos Ridge to the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD), which now owns many of the properties that will make up the Skyline to the Sea trail, that is the agency responsible for planning the trail. Let them know about your desire to make the route a good ride.

For the benefit of those who may need to move a rattlesnake out of a developed area without hurting it (or getting hurt themselves), let me describe a method we used at Coe:

We had a kitchen-sized Rubbermaid trash container, the tall and slender kind. The lid had a hole cut into it about 4×6 inches in size and next to the edge; the lid was wired on. This was devised by long-time Coe resident ranger Barry Breckling.

When we found a rattler in the visitor center or campground areas, we would get our snake trap, and lay it on its side a few feet away from the snake, so that the hole in the lid was closest to the ground. We would then use a long stick to gently herd the snake toward the trap. The snake, seeing what looked like a safe dark crevice, would glide through the hole in the lid into the trash container. We then stood it upright, the snake would slide to the bottom, and the sides were too slick for it to climb out–assuming the snake was less the three feet long, which they were (though I did see a five footer once at Coe in the backcountry).

We could then transport and release (by upending the container) the snake in a safer area. (Safer for humans AND for the snakes, which get killed by people despite prohibitions against it.)

How well they survive in the new area, we had no way of knowing. The National Park Service was recently conducting research on how well relocated rattlesnakes survive at Great Basin National Park, and I don’t what the results were. Apparently they are territorial, and/or need to know the local terrain fairly well before they are successful at hunting rodents and finding suitable shelter.