Snakes On a (dusty) Plane

Last weekend, in search of more danger, drama and cheap beer, Alex, Callagy and I headed back to the dusty town of Freer, TX (pop. 3,305) for the annual Freer Rattlesnake Roundup.

Freer created the festival to drum up tourists and beat down the local snake population, which is a nuisance to the cattle ranchers.

I had heard a lot of things about the festival: namely that it's cruel, environmentally unsustainable, and teaches children not to fear snakes. We also heard it was a lot of fun.

1) Cruel? Not in my eyes. I mean yeah, they do kill every snake, and skin it in front of you. But they did handle them fairly humanely, they didn't play cruel tricks on them, and they dispatched them pretty quickly with an axe to the head. Afterwards, they made use of everything but the guts - even selling the fried meat to people more adventurous than us.

2) Unsustainable? Hard to say, as no one knows how many snakes are out there. We had heard that "thousands" are butchered during the festival, but I counted less than 100 total snakes in two pens, only one of which was filled with "locals". Of course, those numbers could mean there are less to catch, and then we have a problem.

3) Teaches kids to be stupid? Definitely! There were standard "don't try this at home" disclaimers, but the overall effect of being within arms reach of dozens of poisonous snakes was definitely "Big deal." Mostly they curled up together for warmth and wanted nothing to do with the humans in their midst (see pics). Some people were even holding their tots over the plywood wall so they could see better!

Maybe we need to take a page from Conan the Barbarian and ritually sacrifice a virgin to the snakes every year, just to keep things in perspective?