A Uniquely American Animal

MARCH 2020: At a convention center in the belly of Texas, hundreds of rattlesnakes coil in a stark white feces–stamped pit, the rattling sound an echoing, high-pitched scream.

Started in 1958 as a way to control the rattlesnake population in the state, the Sweetwater Texas Rattlesnake Roundup, sponsored by the Jaycees, is billed as the largest snake roundup in the world. (In 2016, the event bagged a record 24,262 pounds of rattlers.) What was historically a relatively intimate occasion, where local ranchers bothered by the prevalence of the cattle-killing species captured rattlesnakes and made a small ceremony of the quelling, is now a nationally reported event possessing the pomp and circumstance of a state fair.

With online tickets selling out weeks in advance, the roundup—notably undampened by coronavirus concerns—boasts guided snake hunts; a rattlesnake cook-off with cash prizes; an area pageant that crowns an annual Miss Snake Charmer; showy snake handlers; live snake-skinning; and fringe-vest-clad vendors selling snakeskin knives, miniskirts, wallets, beer cozies, and the snakes themselves. All this activity hisses within the echoing hollow of the Nolan County Coliseum, a 220-by-90-foot arena that seats thirty-five hundred people.

Men in cowboy hats and scaly boots congregate to bid on the largest captives. Parents take cell phone photos of their delighted children shawled in rattlesnakes under the supervision of gloveless handlers. Teens dressed in tight denim shirts and Lone Star State T-shirts munch on sweets and fried snake. Men in rubber boots prance spryly into the famous snake pit and wield snake sticks with the same defensive pride as one might hold a nation’s flag.

Rattlesnake roundups are uniquely American. The rattlesnake is native to the Americas. In colder months, many rattlesnake species enter a period called brumation in which they coil together in underground dens, some containing as many as a thousand snakes. These gatherings have a cyclical nature: the animals often return to the same dens year after year, occasionally traveling as many as five miles. Some dens are used by generations of rattlesnakes for spans of more than a century.

For a small price, you may wait in line to hold the blade of a machete, which you can swing down onto a rattler, severing the body from its head. Another crowd favorite: standing among hundreds of still-moving bodies hanging from ropes and skinning them barehanded—sometimes, to applause—over bloodstained folding tables. Everywhere the bare hands of men and women stained with blood. No one wears gloves. Unusable or excess corpses are tossed haphazardly into black bags and garbage bins. Particular caution is taken with the severed heads, which can see, flick tongues, and inflict venomous bites for nearly an hour after being split from the body. And everywhere the overpowering smell of snakes, dead and alive: soil-like, acidic.

A Dallas News article quotes Eddie Gomez, a Sweetwater resident and roundup attendee who comes from a long line of rattlesnake hunters: “Around here,” he says, “it’s part of your heritage.” The skinners, auctioneers, spectators, and hunters of the Sweetwater roundup perform their jobs skillfully, gracefully. Dormant in their gestures is a lineage of identical motions, the elegance of inheritance.

Each captured body is measured, sexed, and weighed before being carted (in archaic-looking wooden boxes) to other corners of the festival—primarily to be auctioned or skinned for parts. In an online photo gallery of the event, images of smiling children and celebratory families flutter between pictures of blood and snake carcasses. One photo of a child gleefully sucking on barbecued snake appears just before the image of bloody entrails tangled in a garbage bin. The blood, the barbecue sauce staining the child’s face, estranged twins.

In another Reporter News image, Riley Dodd, a young blonde draped in a white pageant sash, splits apart a copper snake. Her arms are Jesus-splayed outward. She grasps shell-pink innards of the animal in one fist, its mottled brown skin in the other. The expression on her face is a white sheet of possibility: concentration, anguish—pleasure, even. Behind her, partially out of focus, a white wall is emblazoned with the handwritten ROUNDUP 2017 SKINNERS. Beneath the writing is a constellation of signatures and handprints of dried blood.

The Sweetwater roundup has grown increasingly controversial. Herpetologists and animal rights groups, like Advocates for Snake Preservation, have lobbied the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department for years in protest of gassing, capturing, and killing wild snakes for human amusement. Snake hunters feed aluminum tubes into rattlesnake dens, pumping the shelters with gasoline fumes that force out the snakes to where hunters waiting with tongs and sacks sweep them up. The benzene and toluene fumes are often fatal to nontargeted species: other snakes, foxes, owls, small invertebrates, and turtles. Even experienced hunters sometimes mistake the homes of other animals for rattler dens.

Critics argue the gases also contaminate local water supplies. The fumes’ lingering presence in the animal may even taint the precious snake venom milked at roundup events and sold to medical research labs. Mass hunting and removal of rattlesnakes from local ecosystems has long-term effects not immediately obvious—blood dripping slowly from a wound.

Gassing or fuming animals is illegal in other rattlesnake-ridden states. In Texas, multiple committees have been formed, most prominently the Snake Harvest Working Group, appointed by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. But legal action has largely stalled. Even members of the working group are politically divided on the issue. The long-standing tradition of small-town roundups and the huge local economic boom of the annual Sweetwater event bolster a powerful opposition.

What symbolizes the country’s soil is also the animal that plagues and bothers certain citizens to the point of inciting mass-extermination efforts.

In just one year, Sweetwater’s roundup captured an estimated twelve thousand rattlesnakes. In contrast, roughly seven thousand people in America are bit by rattlesnakes in a given year. Of these bites, only five are fatal. (Statistically, intoxicated young men are more likely to receive bites than any other group.) Somewhat ironically, the roundups, which are founded on the premise of the snake’s vileness and perilousness, are where the snakes—captured, beheaded, strung up, skinned, auctioned, eaten—appear at their most vulnerable.

The Reporter News article states the following: “In the competition which was decided on Thursday, [Riley] Dodd was Miss Congeniality. When asked if skinning a snake was congenial, Dodd answered with a laugh, ‘It’s not congenial at all.’”