SWEETWATER, Texas, March 22 (Reuters) – The Texas city of Sweetwater claims fame as residence to the world’s largest annual “rattlesnake roundup,” the place hundreds of kilos of slithering venomous snakes are pressured out of their dens and placed on show.
The rattlesnakes are rounded up within the second weekend of March after which taken to a coliseum, the place tens of hundreds of holiday makers watch organizers milk their venom. They rattle, present their fangs and stun the group with their drive earlier than they’re skinned for leather-based items.
However the Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup, which dates again to 1958, is drawing criticism – not only for the killing, but additionally for the tactic employed to attract out the snakes: hunters inject gasoline into rocky crevices the place the serpents spend the colder months.
“We’ll put a few quarter of a cup, possibly a half a cup of gasoline within the again and so they do not just like the fumes,” stated rattlesnake hunter Jeffery Cornett.
[1/2] Members of the Jaycees pores and skin rattlesnakes on the World’s Greatest Rattlesnake Spherical-up in Sweetwater, Texas March 14, 2009. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi/File Picture
“So what is going on to occur is, you already know, they will come out to form of get a breath of recent air. And as they begin transferring in the direction of the entrance, you already know, we’ll begin snatching them.”
Matt Goode, a rattlesnake skilled and analysis scientist on the College of Arizona, stated such roundups had been “completely horrific.”
Looking is usually a good solution to handle animal populations however must be correctly regulated, he stated, including that placing fuel in dens may harm different wildlife.
The Rattlesnake Conservancy director of operations Tiffany Vibrant stated Texas may study from different states that regulate rattlesnake roundups, like Pennsylvania.
“So, hunters have a restrict to what number of rattlesnakes that they’ll gather,” Vibrant stated. “Whereas in Texas, there is no oversight or regulation to searching these animals. You possibly can exit, you may pour gasoline into the atmosphere and you may gather as many rattlesnakes that you simply discover.”
Writing by Mary Milliken, Modifying by Rosalba O’Brien
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