Rattlesnake Roundup

I took off early this Saturday morning with my friend Adria and headed south to attend the 51st annual Sweetwater Jaycee's Rattlesnake Roundup.  We got to Sweetwater before 11, which was lucky because when we left at 2 the line to get in the parking lot was miles long!  Anyway, it was awesome! I have never seen so many snakes in one place in my life!!  They had a snake handling pit, a milking pit, a skinning pit and the weigh in pit which contained the most snakes.  You could not even see the floor of the pit at the weigh in. 

We watched and learned how to properly handle a snake.  Now when I encounter a snake in the wild I can put it on a table, taunt it with a red balloon and watch it strike and pop that balloon.  But seriously, the wrangler did just that!  He was taunting the snake with a red balloon and when the snake struck and popped the balloon, the big piece of balloon snapped back and smacked a kid in the face.  He jumped out of his seat when it happened, but the whole audience did too!

Then we watched as the milkers milked the venom from the snakes.  It was amazing to me how many people asked how the venom was used.  Anti-venom anyone?  Not much else going on there.  

The skinning was pretty neat.  It was just basic skinning, but it was neat to watch if you like that kind of thing.  

The weigh in pit was the coolest just because it had the most snakes!  They totally covered the floor.  The had caught thousands of pounds of snakes and here they were, hissing, rattling and striking.  Each tank had a couple of  windows in them.  The tanks came up to chest level, but the windows were about 3 foot by 3 foot, plenty of room to squat down and get a face to face with a snake!  And we did!

Their was also a peddler's show, tons of fair food and the gun, knife and coin show.  This truly was Redneck central!  If you ever get the chance to go, I highly recommend it!