While I have had my share of close encounters, usually I haven't had a camera along. In the one below I did as we were doing some desert survival field exercises for purposes of shooting photos for a project. As it happened, we ended up the exercise one afternoon at the Verde River (yes, we do have a few running rivers through our Arizona desert) where we discovered this fellow. We were walking along in line when all of a sudden the guy in front started running backwards at warp speed and it quickly became obvious why. He damn near stepped on him. He's a lot more obvious in the photos than he was in real life just slithering along, before he coiled and started rattling.