With its coiled timber rattlesnake, emblazoned with the infamous words “Dont treat on me” (without the apostrophe), the cryptic reptile slithered its way into the American imagination long before the bald eagle. Even before the Gadsden flag, Franklin published a 1754 cartoon in his Pennsylvania Gazette showing a timber rattlesnake. It is considered the first political cartoon published in an American newspaper and helped cement the rattlesnake as an important early American symbol up through the Civil War. While the reptile was an enduring historic symbol, the real timber rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus) is still a very real snake here in the United States. “The timber rattlesnake was there at the founding.