Rattlesnake looked familiar, AZ biologist says. Turns out they met years before
A familiar rattlesnake slithered into a biologist’s campsite near a ghost town in Arizona.
Turns out, the biologist moved the same rattlesnake out of the same camp four years earlier, the Arizona Game & Fish Department said in a June 17 Facebook post.
Ryan O’Donnell was surveying for willow flycatchers, a small and slender bird, with intern Abbie Brozich near Signal, when they saw the Western diamondback rattlesnake.
“We first spotted it passing under our truck, and we watched it for a few minutes and took a few pictures before moving it to a nearby wash,” O’Donnell told the wildlife agency.
After O’Donnell moved the snake away from their campsite, he said he kept thinking about a different time he moved a snake.
When he got home, he went through old photos and realized why he felt deja vu.
He had encountered the same snake four years earlier when he moved it from the same campsite, wildlife officials said.
“I’m glad to see it is still doing well, four years later, and that the short detours I’ve sent it on haven’t been any more than an inconvenience,” O’Donnell said.
Western diamondback rattlesnakes are venomous and found in Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.
They can be spotted by their “triangular-shaped head” and black and white striped tails before their rattles, according to New Mexico Historic Sites.
These rattlesnakes can grow 3 to 7 feet long.
Signal is an abandoned town about a 145-mile drive northwest from Phoenix.
This story was originally published June 20, 2025 at 12:05 PM with the headline "Rattlesnake looked familiar, AZ biologist says. Turns out they met years before."
