JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Juana Summers.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
And I'm Scott Detrow, and I have some bad news if you live out West. The snakes are waking up.
SUMMERS: Usually, California sees maybe one fatal rattlesnake bite a year. The LA Times reports so far this year, there have been three.
EMILY TAYLOR: Which is really, really tragic and really terrible and a huge setback for those of us trying to do education about rattlesnakes because it makes people fear them even more.
DETROW: Emily Taylor is a biology professor at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo.
TAYLOR: We have a hotline where people can send photos of snakes that they see to have us identify them.
SUMMERS: Usually, business is pretty quiet this time of year, but not in 2026.
TAYLOR: It just went kapow (ph) in early March.
DETROW: Taylor's uptick in calls also coincided with a huge heat wave that has swept across the West this spring.
TAYLOR: You know, they're responding to primarily temperature...
SUMMERS: She is talking about the snakes here.
TAYLOR: ...When they're determining that it's time for them to come out and start looking for mates and looking for meals, and because everything was accelerated, including rodent activity, including the temperatures, that was their cue.
DETROW: And this trend isn't just limited to California.
TAYLOR: We have seen early rattlesnake activity throughout the country. We run livestreaming cameras on rattlesnake dens in Colorado, for example, and there's been some early reports of rattlesnake activity in lower elevations there.
SUMMERS: But Taylor says don't shed your skin over some of the stuff.
TAYLOR: There are a lot of people saying things that aren't true, like, oh, the rattlesnakes' venom is becoming more toxic, or there's more rattlesnakes, or, oh, we need to go out and kill all these rattlesnakes to control their populations.
DETROW: Instead, as the planet warms and snakes come out of winter hibernation earlier, Taylor says we should try to learn alongside the snakes.
TAYLOR: Things like wearing the proper footwear, getting their dogs rattlesnake aversion trained, learning how to distinguish harmless from venomous snakes.
SUMMERS: If we learn to do that, she says, we may start to appreciate the creatures like she does.
TAYLOR: (Imitating rattlesnake buzzing). Well, maybe that sounded like a little one. Sometimes little rattlesnakes have a high-pitched buzz like that. There you go.
DETROW: That is biology professor and rattlesnake connoisseur Emily Taylor. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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