Rattlesnakes can usually be safely and easily moved with little more than a long hooked stick and a trashcan - if you live in an area where they're common, invest in a snake hook, not too expensive and useful for moving ANY snake. Rattlers are a heavy bodied animal, so most of them are not very quick (well, relative to other leaner snakes - all snakes are pretty fast), and generally speaking they're more interested in trying to scare you away by rattling than they are striking. I've only encountered a few, and they've all been very content to leave me alone if I leave them alone - and once the area's been disturbed, they tend to leave on their own once they're sure the coast is clear anyways.
We live in an area with ample venemous snakes, though on our property it is generally copperheads and not rattlers. In fact, the day we came to view the house we bought, there was a copperhead in the shed while we were doing the tour!
As you can imagine the homeowner was horrified and asked if he should get a gun. We told him to get a trashcan and a long stick, and moved it off of the property.
I have never and will never kill a snake of any species on my property; they are valuable parts of the ecosystem and I consider them part of living where I choose to live. In most states, their populations are declining from human encroachment, deliberate hunting/killing, etc. and in many states they are threatened or endangered and protected by law. Righly so, IMO. Despite all of our fears, venemous snakes (all of them, not just rattlers) kill fewer than a dozen people annually in the US - and a portion of those deaths almost always tend to be either captive specimens or injuries that occured during attempts to kill the snake! On the other hand, we kill millions of them - seems like a disproportionate response.
We live in an area with ample venemous snakes, though on our property it is generally copperheads and not rattlers. In fact, the day we came to view the house we bought, there was a copperhead in the shed while we were doing the tour!
I have never and will never kill a snake of any species on my property; they are valuable parts of the ecosystem and I consider them part of living where I choose to live. In most states, their populations are declining from human encroachment, deliberate hunting/killing, etc. and in many states they are threatened or endangered and protected by law. Righly so, IMO. Despite all of our fears, venemous snakes (all of them, not just rattlers) kill fewer than a dozen people annually in the US - and a portion of those deaths almost always tend to be either captive specimens or injuries that occured during attempts to kill the snake! On the other hand, we kill millions of them - seems like a disproportionate response.
