I highly recommend the book: Landscape with Reptile: Rattlesnakes in an Urban World, by Thomas Palmer. It's basically a series of NYer quality essays about different aspects of rattlesnakes.

There is also this African American folktale, amazon.com/Tale-Snake-H…

which is particularly good because the folktale actually correctly expresses the evolutionary reason for the rattle. The tale is also quite funny in spots (Mrs. God hates God's cigars, which God loves to smoke)