March 12, 2007

Enough Is Enough! I Have Had It With These Mother-effing Snakes In This Mother-effing State!"

Just posting this is giving me the creeps:

SWEETWATER, Texas (Reuters) - When Chris Soles says he works in a snake pit, he's not kidding.

The lanky Texan stands among hundreds of slithering rattlesnakes and prods them with special tongs that allow him to snatch the reptiles at arm's length.

"I'm sorting out the dead snakes," said Soles, wearing protective pants as he occasionally picks up a lifeless rattler from the bundle and throws it into a bucket outside the pit.

The snakes are caught during the annual rattlesnake roundup in Sweetwater, Texas, which this town 200 miles west of Dallas bills as the biggest in the world.

The three-day event, which ends on Sunday, includes a rattlesnake-eating contest.

[Insert shudder here.]

Of course, it wouldn't be a story without somebody getting their eco-undies in a wad:

"There's no glory in rattlesnake hunting," said Lee Fitzgerald, an associate professor and curator of amphibians and reptiles at Texas A&M University.

Hunters scour the arid landscape for snake dens, into which they pump gas fumes to drive them out. Then they snatch them with the tongs.

Hunters say the fumes have minimal ecological impact but many scientists disagree.

"It's an unethical way to hunt and it harms other animals such as scorpions and rodents," said Fitzgerald.

Yeah. Boy. Gotta watch out not to hurt them scorpions. Stupid Aggie.

Rattlesnakes are bad, m'kay? Just kill them already.

Stupid, stupid Aggie.


Posted by Robert at March 12, 2007 02:46 PM | TrackBack
Comments

I really contend that Noah missed a memo about not bothering with 2 of each reptile. *Shudder* indeed. Yuk.

Posted by: beth at March 12, 2007 03:19 PM

*sigh* Of course, we who actually live here in West Texas know a little more about our ecology than the knee-jerk enviro-turds who look down their noses at us "cowboys" (Cowboys with top 1% IQ's and big city educations, even).

1) MANY more rattlesnakes are killed on the roads by cars every year - hybrids or no - than are taken in the yearly roundup.

2) The rattlesnake population density is so high in some parts out here, that you can't even run livestock in some of the area (!): Not cattle, not goats, not sheep, not anything.

3) Rattlesnake DOES NOT taste like chicken. It's better than that.

4) God gave rattlesnakes rattles so that ancient Bison and other megafauna wouldn't step on them. It does no good to have poison if stray hooves could crush you without warning.

5) Rattlesnakes are one of the reasons we wear boots out here.

To hell with the "Enviro-Fun-Police": Let them eat snake.

Posted by: Hucbald at March 12, 2007 04:40 PM

No, no, no. Let them eat unflavored tofu. We'll eat the snake.

Posted by: owlish at March 12, 2007 07:03 PM