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.
Don’t be sorry...I love personal stories like that. My area of western Wisconsin is extremely rocky and hilly. It’s known to be a good area for rattlesnakes, but they’re almost all exclusively up in the hills. I do like to walk in a state park that’s right on the Mississippi. There are numerous bluffs lining the river. Snakes will come down from the rocks to get water. About ten years ago I was walking a path close to the water’s edge. In the middle of the path was a huge, diamondback rattler. But very dead. (flies buzzing around) How it died, I don’t know. But it still gave me the creeps to step over the carcass. But that’s the only time I’ve ever encountered a rattler-dead or alive despite a lifetime of walking the bluffs in my area.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.