A man who collected 540kg of rattlesnakes was first in line on Friday morning for the annual Rattlesnake Roundup in the small West Texas town of Sweetwater.
James Wells has been gathering western diamondback rattlesnakes for 25 of the roundup’s 48 years and was waiting before 7am to garner premium prices — $5 per pound — for the first 2 000 pounds (900kg) of the poisonous reptiles.
”It gets in your blood,” said Wells (73). ”If you’re doing it for the money, you’re going to go into the hole. We do it more for the sport.”
The event, officially known as the World’s Largest Rattlesnake Roundup, started as a way to control the snakes in the area but has grown into a four-day attraction that brings about 30 000 visitors and an economic impact of more than $5-million.
Besides the roundup, there is a parade, a snake-charmer pageant, a snake-meat-eating contest and snake-handling demonstrations. There is also a demo on how to skin a rattler in preparation for cooking or to use the skins.
Scores of schoolchildren watched as crate after crate of small, medium and large rattlesnakes were dumped into pits and handlers milked snakes’ venom glands.
The record came in 1982 when participants rounded up 8 094kg of snakes.
Texas A&M University researchers have said the roundup pulls about 1% of the state’s western diamondback population.
”One percent is still too much,” said Andrea Cimino, a spokesperson for the Humane Society of the United States, which believes rattlesnake roundups are cruel, ecologically disruptive and that methods used to collect the snakes are inhumane.
Some collectors pump gasoline or propane fumes into snake dens to get the reptiles to come out. Some use mirrors to reflect sunlight into the dens, and the snakes, using their heat-sensing exterior glands, pick up on the temperature rise and come out hoping to dine on a passing rodent. — Sapa-AP