Posted on 03/11/2013 6:09:06 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Participants in the annual, three-day Sweetwater Rattlesnake RoundUp in Texas caught more than a ton of snakes, organizers said.
More than 30,000 people attended the event, they said, with visitors including people from as far away as China, Israel, Germany, England and Australia..
The roundup paid $13-per-pound for captured rattlers, featured about 2,160 pounds of rattlesnakes being weighed, the most since the 2,168-pound total in 2010, the Abilene (Texas) Reporter-News reported Monday.
"The importance of this is to control the snake population and to inform the public," Texas Game Warden George Pasley said. "You see all these snakes here and you think there can't be many left in the wild, but there's plenty. We see rattlesnakes all the time. I have seen no shortage of rattlesnakes."
Kathleen and Darrell McIntyre of Childress won a $400 prize for capturing the longest snake. It measured 78 inches.
Dinner is served!
$13 a pound ? Wow.
Now... if we could only get the meth heads to go after copperheads instead of copper.
I’ll bet they were all registered Democrats. Why not, those politicians in DC are rattlesnakes, Demo-Rats, and sleazy sidewinders.
Now for the lawyers.
As Alton Brown would say, “Good eats!”
This is a popular topic this evening.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2995852/posts
Wow, so *that’s* why White House tours were shut down.
30,000 in the Everglades would put a nice dent in the python problem.
I thought this was a joke about Congress.
Could they be dropped on the WH grounds?
I’m wondering if Texas is the rattlesnake capital of the world. The wife and I stopped at a nice wayside near Amarillo a few years ago, and there was a sign next to the facilities warning about rattlesnakes.
hee hee hee
I’ll furnish the snakes if you have the delivery system.
Snake Verde
Snake Chile Colorado
Snake adobado
Snake Tacos
Can’t name the next item on the menu lest I be zot’d....
Oh do tell!
That works out to about 21,000 lbs of rodents allowed to live and breed over the course of a year - if you ever needed evidence that people are really really stupid, here you have it.
First couple of days I was assigned to Goodfellow AFB in San Angelo, TX, I decided to take a walk out the front gate towards civilization (that was a mistake). Not long into my walk I crossed a small bridge and came across a smooshed rattler along the roadway that was a good 10ft long or so and at least 4 or 5 inches wide. Yes, he was smashed, but still it was a huge freaking snake.
This is a awesome event. I think there’s one in Brownsville, too.
I used to go out with these guys back in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s.
It’s a lot of fun.
I kill every damn one of them I see. My first bite put me in the hospital for 3 weeks and then it took 5 months of physical therapy before I could walk without crutches and about a year before I walked without a limp. My buddies grandson was hit in the foot, they had to amputate his big toe. A coworker got hit in the hand and they had to amputate his little finger and ring finger. Rattler bites do an incredible amount of tissue damage and nearly always leave permanent disability in some manner. They are a big problem out here in West TX and a big threat to any who work in the oilfields so pardon me if I do not share your sympathy’s.
As far as the rodents go I don’t have a clue where you came up with that number and don’t really care, but to suggest that a 5 lb rattler eats 50 lbs of rodents a year is laughable. A rattler on average eats about 4 to 6 times a year We have more than enough critters around here that feed on rodents, bullsnakes, coachwhips, skunks, ringtails, possums, raccoons, fox, cyotes and bobcats and I didn’t even mention about 20 different species of raptors. We can survive just fine without rattlers.
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