I first wrote this when I learned of the 2008 hunt, but guess what? It’s time for them to do it again. This year the hunt is scheduled for April 10-12 and information is at the site cited below. (Cool homophone – ing, huh?)
Don’t want to read further down? Well, here it is again – THE SITE.
Featured again this year are:
James White & the Outlaw Handlers– Grandbury, Texas — Performing Feats Daring and Courageous in a pit filled with LIVE Rattlesnakes.
They were at at the 2008 show and I rambled a bit about therm:
I saw that James White and the Outlaw Handlers were going to be putting on a show – a “continuous” show. He sounds interesting and I guess he has been doing this snake business for a number of years – as in decades. I found one article about a Sharon Springs roundup in which he appeared, although then the group was known as the Fangs and Rattlers. I don’t know much about what they do, but I think he puts a lot of snake tails in his mouth . . . and the rest of the snake is attached to each tail. I think I would be too nervous to watch.
Well . . . They’re back.
Then also, when you go from link to link about snake hunting, you stumble on things, maybe like walking across the prairie without looking where you step. I landed on a site about a 15 second Film Festival somewhere and one of the clips was of a beating rattlesnake heart – after it had been taken out of the snake. Hey, I am not going to provide a link because I don’t want to cause problems for you. I didn’t realize what I was going to see and I didn’t push replay. Yes, though, the snake’s heart can be stripped out and still keep beating – They may be Snakex , like Timex, for those of you who remember John Cameron Swayze.
However, the Snakehunt site itself is HERE and they have been doing it for 46 years and on April 11-13, they will do it again! Now, I must go do the Indian Dance for no rattlesnake dreams.
And here’s some right good news from last year:
According to the Waurika hometown paper, it was a big success and the concession stand actually could have sold twice as much snake snacks. And I guess no one was bitten.
We lived in Balko, Oklahoma, for three years. It is located in the OK panhandle, a place that has more than it’s share of quirks. Cow chip tossing at the county fair and a 12 foot tall beaver that sits on mainstreet of the county seat. There is a town, or rather a wide spot in the road named Slapout that has an annual Rattlesnake Roundup. It’s quite the event to attend. Hundreds of rattlesnakes are caught, collected and a great deal of them are milked by handlers. The venom is sold to pharmaceutical companies and scientists.