Different trails, different Experience,dangerous encounter while Mountain biking

[Giulianna23]

A 3 day mountain biking in Texas:
The first day (Friday) we both have flats at about 4 miles of riding.

The second day (Saturday) when we were getting to know the trails better and starting to get comfortable riding a totally different type of trail we got interrupted by a call from my aunt wanting me to go pick her dog from the Vet so we just rode about 3 fun miles. Then went home and notice my sons rear tire was going flat and located a huge thorn beside several small ones on both tires.

Last day (Sunday) Finally we get to almost do the whole 8 mile trail. we had all the time of the world and even planning on doing a second loop and then I had the most dangerous encounter I ever had in my whole life!... A rattlesnake right in front of me, right there that I couldn't even stop and almost ran over, I had to manouver around and to the side. I don't know how I got away from her and fortunately my son is way slower rider than me and was coming about 30 seconds behind me so I had time to yell at him to stop and turn back. That thing was HUGE!!. We just did 6 miles and couldn't complete the trail. That snake scared the crap out of me , but Big Time!...
We had a lot of fun despite that freaking snake.

How do you people from Texas deal with this situations?... I will be back to visit my aunt sometime in the future but I don't know if I want to go back to that trail. It was really fun..I loved it...but just thinking about having to deal with a rattlesanke again makes me think twice about it. Is it ussual to encounter them on this type of trails?