Don't listen to Galatians while hiking...

So today was exciting: Eric, Alex, and I went out climbing rocks, like we usually do, but ran into an unexpected visitor. Eric was leading the way on the hike in listening on his iPhone to the book of Galatians in preparation for a rhetoric paper he is working on. Thankfully he was also carrying the crash pad and tossed it around a tree before scrambling through a constriction in the trail. As the pad hit the ground, a buzzing sound erupted from the dirt: we had spooked a rattlesnake! The bugger then decided to make his new home under our pad. "Rattled" as we were, we managed to scrambl around on the boulders above, flip up the pad, and dispatch the snake with very long sticks. I had never seen a living rattlesnake outside of a zoo before, and I don't exactly want to repeat it in the near future. We very cautiously continued down the trail, suspiciously poking every nook and cranny in the rocks and jumping at the rustling grass. We've learned now to expect the unexpected, to hike in boots and pants while in potential rattlesnake country in the summer, and will most likely not listen to our iPods as we walk down the trail anymore...