...Got a real good look at the buzzing tail as that was the only part visible after my initial somewhat exhited reaction and exit. I haven't jumped that high since high school basketball...
I've told this before...
My one and only close encounter with a rattler was up on the Grasslands. At the sound, I
automatically leaped about four feet away.
By "automatically," I mean I didn't even integrate the sound in my head, I just jumped away before I even recognized what it was. It was like there was a previously-unknown-by-science buzz detector in my ears which bypassed any brain function and sent the jump signal directly to my legs. It wasn't like a plain old startle reaction, like someone yelling boo. Wasn't even that loud.
Then I located it. Small one. I let it go. It wasn't till I walked a couple of dozen feet away that I realized that I had leaped so automatically, without thinking about it. I'm not sure if it was dumb luck or what that I jumped away from it instead of toward it.
Hope that stays as my one and only encounter. I'll never forget that leap I made without even thinking about it.
I've heard of young horses who could not possibly have "learned" that response, leaping away the first time they do hear it. Not buck or rear or anything, just an instant leap away. Told to me by an old-timer after I related that story to him.
Now that story doesn't grant me any credentials, but it strikes me that I wouldn't tread lightly in that shed. I'd stomp around in boots to alert any snakes, and listen for the rattle Might give them a chance to hightail it. Or slither it. Or for you to locate it and elim...
Oh, wait. Endangered species, eh? Well, you're not engaged in the sport of hunting them, so there must be some exceptions for this kind of situation, no?
Terry
