Times Insider delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how news, features and opinion come together at The New York Times. In this piece, Jess Bidgood, a reporter who wrote about a controversial rattlesnake conservation plan, describes her first encounter with the venomous reptile.  I have been thinking a lot about rattlesnakes lately.  Scientists in Massachusetts want to create a colony of timber rattlesnakes, which are poisonous, on an uninhabited island in the center of the state. Needless to say, the plan has engendered fierce opposition from residents and politicians. I wrote about the Great Rattlesnake Island Controversy of 2016 for Sunday’s paper.  One point that scientists made over and over was that it was highly unlikely the island’s snakes would ever cross paths with people. No one lives on the island in question, and the scientists said it was unlikely that the snakes would leave. In addition, scientists said people hardly ever see the state’s existing population of rattlesnakes — even the ones that live in a popular hiking destination near Boston.  But, as it happens, I have.  It was the fall of 2011, and I went hiking in the Blue Hills, a nature reserve about 13 miles from downtown Boston, with seven friends.  We heard it before we saw it: a rainstick rattle, one that had, for most of my friends (the majority of whom are longtime Northeasterners), previously existed solely in old Western films. But we knew exactly what it was.  The snake was coiled, with a yellowish diamond pattern. It didn’t seem poised to bite. But its rattle was a searing, almost mechanical sound that sent chills down our spines.  The timber rattlesnake's population has been decimated, but biologists are hoping it will thrive on an uninhabited island in Massachusetts.  One of my friends, Courtney Morrissey, saw a labradoodle bounding toward us and yelled “No!” as she ran to catch it by the collar to stop it from crossing paths with the snake. We all froze and watched the snake slither across the hiking trail, a lissome streak of yellow apparently uninterested in us, before it disappeared into the underbrush.  Several weeks ago, I sent Tom French, the biologist at the helm of the rattlesnake island plan, a photograph that my friend Tim Fitzsimons had taken of the snake.  “This is a very nice Timber Rattlesnake,” Mr. French wrote in an email. “This is a light colored individual, sometimes called a yellow morph or yellowphase.”  He was excited about the encounter.  “You’re lucky!” he said over the phone. He said that roughly 200,000 hikers use the reservation every year and guessed that “less than one half of one percent sees a snake.”  Did we feel lucky? There are fewer than 200 rattlesnakes left in the state, and, in retrospect, it is fairly thrilling to have seen one in the wild. I didn’t feel threatened. But in the moment, it was certainly a shock. New Englanders are simply not accustomed to running into venomous snakes — and that is part of what has made it so difficult for scientists to sell the rattlesnake island plan.  I asked Courtney, an avid hiker who has moved to Boulder, Colo., how she felt about the encounter, then and now.  “I was afraid to walk through tall grass for the rest of the day, and made my friend carry me on his back,” Courtney wrote in a text message. “But now I live in Colorado and see rattlesnakes more frequently, so I’ve gotten used to them.”  But, she added: “I’ll always remember my first snake.”
Jess Bidgood wrote about a plan to save Rattlesnakes from extinction. She’d already encountered a member of the species — in a dark wood near Boston.