SWEETWATER — The snake was beheaded, gutted and skinned Saturday morning. But that afternoon its quarter-sized heart was still beating as it lay atop a folding table at the 54th annual Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup.
For 13-year-old Alexander Kirk, it was about as good as a birthday party could get.
"At first it felt soft like a lump of Jell-O," he said of the heart on display at the snake-skinning demonstration booth. "Then it got hard."
With more than 1,200 pounds of western diamondbacks to be milked, skinned and gutted, there was not a dull moment for Kirk or the thousands of others who came to the event at the Nolan County Coliseum.
Wearing boots and snake chaps with the cuffs sealed to their ankles with fluorescent duct tape, the sponsoring Sweetwater Jaycees shuffled through the piles of slithering snakes in the pits as crowds watched.
They used hooked rods to lift up the largest snakes to show them off before the animals were taken to the milking station and then to be skinned.
"The people who live around here don't like snakes," explained Roy Johnson, a game warden for the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. This year's roundup, which draws snakes collected from across West Texas, was not nearly as productive as years past. The record was set in 1982, with 17,986 pounds collected.
But after a yearlong drought and the worst fire season on record, there were simply not as many snakes to gather, Johnson said.
Texas does not keep records of what impact roundups have on snake populations. And there is controversy over how the snakes are collected.
Johnson and others at the roundup said the most effective way to collect snakes is to gas them out of their burrows. The gas is usually the fumes of unleaded gasoline pumped through a sprayer.
"It's not the gas, it's just the smell of it," said Mike Glass, a senior member of the Jaycees. "Actually shooting gas down in there is a big no-no."
The problem is snakes are very sensitive to even a small exposure to gas as a liquid, and too much can kill them in their dens. The snakes that do come out often die soon after. TPWD is considering a rule to ban gassing.
"If the snake is gassed, it no longer acts like a snake," said Ken Darnell, who has purchased the snake venom from the roundup for the past 15 years.
The venom is frozen and used to make antivenin and for medical research. A good snake can earn the Jaycees $5 to $10 worth of venom.
Darnell does not like gassing because it shortens the life of the snakes, he said. But as all the snakes at the roundup are milked just once before being butchered for their skin and meat, that does not really matter. And if there was no gassing, the roundup would not have enough snakes, Glass said.
For Sweetwater, that would be tragic, said 16-year-old Kayla Chowning, who was crowned Miss Snake Charmer on Thursday night.
"It's a big deal," she said of the festival, which also includes a carnival and rides. "It brings business to town."
The money raised by the weekend event — $40,000 to $50,000 — goes to local charities and scholarships, organizers say.
For those who don't have regular exposure to rattlesnakes, it's also a chance to realize that your natural instinct to just leave snakes alone is best.
"You've got to respect them," Johnson said. "If you don't, they will get you."
For Mary Lee Boyer from Pennsylvania, who came to the show with her husband despite her fear of snakes, that lesson was obvious.
"Y'all are weird down here in Texas no matter what," she said. "Normal people are back home. We don't play with things that are dangerous."
cmcdonald@express-news.net
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
0 意見:
Post a Comment