THE HILL COUNTRY — This is a tale of two snakes, both rattlesnakes, crotalus atrox, and why they got to live. One big reason they're still among the living is that they got lucky when they decided to crawl across the road as I was going by. And although they acted somewhat differently — one was extremely shy and tried only to sneak away and hide; the other was slightly more aggressive and rattled as he slid into the rocks to disappear — neither of them wanted to bite anybody, and that saved their bacon.