I did not know that! But I wouldn't put much credence into what anyone from Parks & Wildlife say...IMO.... When my aunt died, we brought all her stuff home and had boxes piled high and wide in the garage. She had two storage rooms in Roswell, NM filled to the roof with boxes of antiques and furniture. It was really cold one day, and I went into the garage to get something out of the freezer. I bumped into a stack of boxes and heard "rattling" sound. Husband was out of town and I was scared we'd brought a snake home from NM. I called the neighbor down the street who likes guns.... He came up, but didn't go into the garage. He decided it probably had to be a snake...but he thought it got into the garage to hibernate when the weather turned cool. I had a long pole and I tapped the stack of boxes...and rattle, rattle! Yep, a snake...and he went home. So I called Parks & Wildlife the next morning. After being handed off to a few people, some guy asked me to describe the sound I was hearing. So, I made the noise as best I could. He was sure it was a rattler and that I should ''stay out of the garage until spring when it warmed up and the snake would just go out on it's own." Gosh...that's just what I wanted to hear!
So for quite a while, I only went into the garage when husband was home, and then only with the garage door all the way up (for fast get-away). We both could still hear the rattling every once in a while. And I would leave the garage door open as much as possible to let the dang thing out when it was ready. Husband would periodically look for it, but not much.... Then one spring day, I bravely started moving those boxes around. On top of one stack of boxes was a thick plastic plate. I picked it up...and... it rattled. It was a microwave turn-table. It had a timer under the plate and when I tapped it, it would rotate around the "teeth" on the timer...and rattle.... My rattle snake was a microwave turntable.....
