Word: crotalus
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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After being weighed, the snakes are dumped in a great braided mass into chest-high octagonal white plywood stockades, called pits. There they can be safely ogled and photographed in all their slithering, tongue-flicking, fang- baring, rattling, coiling, head-rearing glory. The Western diamondback, Crotalus (castanet) atrox (fearful), is indeed a horrible-wonderful creature. Its head is broad and flat, and its close-set, silver gray eyes with black pupils seem fixed and furious. A dry, cool skin of interlocking gray-and-brown diamond pattern leads to a pyramid of hard keratin nubs, acquired at the tail after successive...
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