Why not slaughter snakes? The bible says it is their fate to be ground under our heel, after all. Laelaps has a story about a town in Texas that turns butchery into a fun family event — warning, there is a photo, and if you decapitate enough snakes, you can get a lot of blood spattered around.
I was most disgusted at the rationale; I heard this kind of stupid excuse a lot when I was a young fellow, in the country around Eastern Washington:
According to Yahoo!News, some justify the atrocities by claiming that it keeps livestock safe from the dangerous snakes, and although I haven’t seen any numbers, I wouldn’t imagine that rates of mortality by snakebite are very high among livestock.
Think for a moment. Can you imagine a rattlesnake hunting down and swallowing a cow? Then maybe you can swallow that story. Snakes don’t prey on cows. They might rarely bite one that stumbles across it, but that’s not going to be a major health hazard to a cow.
I’m hoping the lovely town of Sweetwater, Texas experiences the sweet justice of a plague of rats and mice.
The roundup is simply disgusting. It’s wrong in so many ways I can’t count them. Many of them use gasoline or some other chemicals to bring them out of their dens, and in the process kill turtles and other things that may be sharing the dens with the rattlesnakes. Then they handle them roughly, put them in crowded bags, and just treat them like garbage really.
Oh Whacking Day,
Oh Whacking Day,
Our hallowed snake skull-cracking day.
We’ll break their backs,
Gouge out their eyes,
Their evil hearts, we’ll pulverize.
Oh Whacking Day,
Oh Whacking Day,
May God bestow His grace on thee.
Whacking Day. Life imitates art.
I had a bad dream last night about someone killing my daughter’s ball python. I should’ve skipped that link. What a terrible thing to do!
For a better take on how to treat rattlesnakes, check out the Mississippi Valley Conservancy’s video on Timber Rattlers in the blufflands.
http://www.mississippivalleyconservancy.org/videos.html
I’m with you on the ridiculous of the situation, but altough I have no information on texas’ snakes, here in Brazil we do have cow eating snakes.
Everything’s bigger in… Brazil?
There are several towns in Texas and Oklahoma (and other states) that have annual ‘Rattlesnake Roundups.’ These attract thousands of visitors with a carnival atmosphere – a butcher shop, rattlesnake sandwiches, rides, many vendors, often a ‘Rattlesnake Queen’Contest, contests for the most snakes, the largest snake, etc. I have seen a rattler with mouth sewn shut used for photographs (at a cost) for people holding them around their necks in the sun. The snake died from the heat and was replaced with another one. Vendors sell reptile curios, including alligator claws, stuffed snakes and lizards — ad nauseum.
There have been several demonstrations against these events with no noticeable impact. The towns do claim that the roundups are a major source of income for the small towns.
Certainly a despicable and ignorant activity that, unfortunately, appears to continue every year. I photographed one such event several years ago that documents my comments.
Well, I don’t know about Texas, but back at my family’s place in Louisiana, any snake that showed up on our property was prone to be a dead snake very quickly, unless it was obviously either a king snake or a grass snake. I had several friends and relatives that had been bitten by a snake at one point or another, and had a few near-misses myself. So, while I wouldn’t participate in the Rattlesnake Roundup, I can’t exactly feel much sympathy for the snakes.
I wonder what Yig would have to say about all of this?
Why is it a waste? The skins will be turned into belts and used to decorate all sorts of things, and the bigger snakes will get eaten. I don’t think Sweetwater has much to worry about changing its ecology by this. Most of the rattlesnakes won’t get caught. They’re almost as common in parts of Texas as mosquitos are in a Minnesota summer. ;-)
There have been several scientific studies that show the negative impact of such events on the ecology of areas where the snakes are collected. Rather than cite them here,anyone interested can search “rattlesnake roundups’on Google Scholar.
An unfortunate side product of the collection methods is the killing of other animals in burrows where gasoline (and othet toxic substances is used. For example, endangered gopher tortoises are killed in some areas, along with anything else that might be present.
“Laelaps has a story about a town in Texas that turns butchery into a fun family event…”
What do you mean “turns butchery?” Hasn’t butchery always been a fun family event. Why, I remember back in ’63 when my dad took me to the last great Irish cull. But, that’s another story.
You’re missing the point about rattlesnakes hunting down and swallowing cattle. Of course, you never hear about it happening. That’s because the good people of Texas and Oklahoma hunt down and kill the the rattlers before they can swollow our cattle. And I’m thankful for it. I’m also thankful for this werewolf repellent they sold me at the last rattlesnake roundup. I haven’t been bothered by a single werewolf since I bought it. Unlike you smarty-pants city-slickers in Morris.
I confess. When I lived in an isolated part of australia, miles from the local town, which was only a corner store and a gas pump, if I came across a snake close to the house, it was history. I didn’t go searching for them, but under those circumstances, I considered a “pre-emptive strike” a wise one. If bitten, I would have been dead before I could have received medical treatment, especially if I was bitten by a taipan. (king brown)
The turning point for most people in the bush is the discovery of a snake or snakes IN the house. You only need to find one poisonous snake in the house under these circumstances to initiate a pre-emptive strike stance.
Now that I live in a large city, any snake I come across is just “moving through” – probably towards the bush land situated further up the hills. They are not taking up residence. Whereas, when I lived in the bush, they DID take up residence. And I ensured that the residence was temporary.
Sick. Just sick.
What is wrong with people?
I guess the politicians don’t have the guts to put a stop to it, and I can’t find any evidence that PETA or the Humane Society give a shit about this either.
Do I have the wrong end of the stick here, or is much of the USA really, really, primitive and barbaric under a very thin veneer of civilisation?
Why, why, WHY did I check out this blog before going to bed?
I imagine my reaction to Rattlesnake Roundups would be similar to a normal person’s reaction to a Baby Squish Carnival.
As an aside, I found the first snake of the season today. A beautiful garter snake with a red checker pattern. I filled a whole roll of film with nothing but scale patterns before letting it go.
And now I’m going to have nightmares of it with its mouth sewn shut.
Maybe not. Most snakebites in Australia result from people trying to kill or catch them; left alone, snakes have very little interest in wasting their venom something too big to eat. Even when they do bite, they often don’t inject venom (it’s costly to produce, and if a dry bite can warn off a potential threat, so much the better).
Obviously snakes in the house need to be removed one way or another, but even there it’s often possible to do that without killing them.
(Besides, killing snakes is generally illegal here; they’re protected wildlife.)
Hmm, Willard thought as he patted Socrates, looks like a great place to set up shop.
#3 – The Whacking Day episode of the Simpsons was a reaction to these snake roundups, actually.
Buffybot – no universal health care, no guaranteed vacation or paid leave, long working hours, pollution, fanatic Christianists, violent media, fear of sexuality… no, you have the right end of the stick.
Also:
As far as Australian snakes are concerned, proper first-aid (compression bandaging) is very effective at delaying the onset of envenomation for many hours; anybody living in snake-prone areas should have a compression bandage handy and know how to use it. (Recommendations elsewhere in the world differ because US snakes have very different venoms.)
FWIW, king browns (pseudechis australis) are not the same thing as taipans (genus oxyuranis).
beepbeepitsme,
That’s a common reaction in Oz. I have friends who have a certain … reaction when my pet snake surprises them. Reaching for a shovel is the first part.
BTW Taipan and King Brown are different species. King Brown’s are from WA, and are also known as Mulga Snakes. Neither are snakes to be bitten by, both are MUCH more venomous then rattlesnakes.
There are only 12-15 deaths by snakebite in the USA per annum. That’s similar (slightly lower) then deaths in Australia per capita, hardly enough to justify a cull.
Also:
As far as Australian snakes are concerned, proper first-aid (compression bandaging) is very effective at delaying the onset of envenomation for many hours; anybody living in snake-prone areas should have a compression bandage handy and know how to use it. (Recommendations elsewhere in the world differ because US snakes have very different venoms.)
FWIW, king browns (pseudechis australis) are not the same thing as taipans (genus oxyuranis).
Blast, got an error message the first time around and didn’t realise it had posted already. Apologies for that.
PETA only cares about fur and spends most of its time throwing Molotov cocktails at old women who live next door to college professors, not ecology or critters that aren’t just utterly adorable.
Yeah, you have the wrong end of the stick. There is no veneer. But you’re right, otherwise.
What fun.
Reminds me of the Higgins pigeon shoot, another wholesome family event.
Sometimes I wish I wasn’t a human. We have no rival when it comes to cruelty and arrogance.
Snakes don’t go out of their way to kill other creatures for fun.
Too bad they can’t say the same thing about us.
The Law of the Wild
by Rudyard Kipling
And this is the law of the wild
As true and as blue as the sky
And the wolf that keeps it will prosper
But the wolf that breaks it will die.
Like the vine that circles the tree trunk
This law runneth forward and back
The strength of the pack is the wolf
And the strength of the wolf is the pack.
Kill only to eat, or to keep from being eaten.
Raptors eat snakes and rodents. Snakes also eat rodents. Crackers kill raptors (for fun). So when you have a lot of Crackers, you get a lot of snakes.
(This is the Dixie version of Darwin’s humble bee and milk story!)
“I can’t find any evidence that PETA or the Humane Society give a shit about this either.”
Probably for the same reason PETA doesn’t bother motorcycle-riders for their leather jackets.
RE geoffrey,
Though I agree that king browns are not the same as taipans, they were commonly called such in many places in australia. I lived on an isolated farm more than a quarter of a century ago, and they were referred to in this manner.
I also agree that training in first aid is essential, though the idea of performing first aid on myself and trying to drive 50 miles to the nearest town was not an attractive prospect.
I also think it is easy to dismiss “snake killing” as an unecessary act, but I usually find this to be the case of people who have never lived in circumstances of isolation.
Under these circumstances, one, big brown snake curled up in the cutlery drawer, is one too many.
Country folk in Australia used to use their isolation as an excuse for alot of things…
“You wine-sipping city elites don’t understand aborigines. There’s no reason to open the municipal pool to them! They don’t like swimming…it has nothing to do with race. They only understand physical violence, which is why the police have to knock sense into them.”
Oh, and I don’t support an organized cull. Not at all. My story was told merely to represent that there are circumstances when I think it is legitimate to kill a snake.
Of course this is illegal in Australia now to do so, and I mostly support that, but I do understand why isolated farmers kill off snakes if they find them near or in the house. Maybe you have to live this, to understand it.
Lay a Brazilian cow eating snake down next to a Texas Western Diamondback. The Brazilian snake is just a little bit bigger.
Normal length for a mature Western Diamondback rattler is about a meter or so. Big ones may reach 2 meters. Record books contain accounts of 2.25 meter snakes.
Normal length for a mature Anaconda is about 4 meters. Big ones may reach 8 meters. Record books contain accounts of 8.5 (or 9?) meter snakes.
(From memory.)
I think there is definitely a big difference between killing a venomous snake that has decided to take up residence in your garage and stomping out into the brush (where you never go anyway) and smoking out every one you can find for the express purpose of killing them all. The former I would defend at any time, the latter, never. However, I’m such a wuss I would call animal control to have an expert remove it from my garage, and in that case it would probably be removed rather than killed.
For what it’s worth, the Humane Society of the US does, in fact, work against these events:
http://www.hsus.org/wildlife/issues_facing_wildlife/rattlesnake_roundups/index.html
And here’s the position paper, citing most of the science, of the ASIH:
http://www.asih.org/files/positionpaper.pdf
By that logic, I think it’s easy to label vengeance as immoral, but I usually find this to be the case of people who have never been seriously wronged.
Or in general, it is easy to dismiss something as unnecessary based on statistical evidence, but I usually find this to be the case of people without pertinent personal anecdotes.
RE science pundit
Frankly, I don’t remember discussing whether or not it was moral to kill a snake curled up in the cutlery drawer. And frankly, the thought of whether it was or not, didn’t play highly in my assessment of the situation.
re post #13
Buffybot, humans are high-tech savages. It ain’t just killin’ varmints that expose this. It’s stupid bumper stickers like “My Kid Can Beat Up Your Honor Student” and “Keep Working, Millions on Welfare Depend on You” and “Killing the Terrorists Over There Stops Them From Killing us Over Here.” We may have advanced space programs, but if not for the Cold War we would probably still be looking at the moon and wondering if the rocks could tell us about the origin of our planet.
It ain’t just the United States, either. The snobby Brits forget that we merely inherited their empire of colonialism at the end of WWII. The Brits introduced caning to their Asian colonials.
As for rattlesnakes, I would rather have them around controlling the mouse and rat population. It isn’t a matter of controlling the rattlesnake population. This is all about human demonstration of dominion over all the animals. And feeling damn good about ourselves, to boot.
I wonder about the creationist response to this, if they say that teaching evolution teaches us to behave like monkeys.
Re #5
The snakes in Brazil certainly are bigger but the cows are a bit smaller ;-), This is in Texas after all.
As for those moronic imbeciles who take part in this atrocity may they suffer a scourge of plague brought on by flea infested rats!
Seems to me that this is all just a case of speciesism. You don’t get a lot of outcry for animals who are so little like us in appearance. It seems our moral outrage is parceled out to mammals first, then birds, then so on down the line. The more unlike us the animal, the less people develop empathy or concern. There wouldn’t be outcry at all if they were killing inverts. This wouldn’t have made news at all if it were a California nudibranch whacking event.
I guess I’m not surprised that so many people don’t see anything wrong with killing snakes. I’m just disappointed by it.
When I would visit my cousins out West (desert part of Washington state) they would kill rattlesnakes that were near the house and by extension small children. They also kept near-feral barn cats to keep the rodent population at bay. The cats did more to discourage the snakes than the humans. It is quite a sight to watch eight half-grown kittens taunt a full grown rattler under the benevolent eye of their mother.
Fear also plays a big factor. You don’t see much outcry when the violence is directed at species that are viewed (usually wrongly) as a threat to humans. My son has had a pet California King Snake in his room 2 years now, and I am certainly more comfortable and more sympathetic towards snakes than I was prior to that.
Maybe so, but my second example (the general statement about statistical evidence vs. anecdotes) perfectly describes your original statement. You were essentially making the fallacious argument “You have no right to criticize these people because you haven’t been through what I’ve been through.”
I chose the morality of vengeance as a parallel (“It’s easy for you to be against the death penalty/torture/etc. because you haven’t been victimized.”) because it was the first common use of that fallacy that came to my mind. I could have just as easily said “I think it is easy to dismiss ‘ghosts’ as unreal, but I usually find this to be the case of people who have never lived in a haunted house.”
I’m sorry, but it’s the same bogus argument.
I went to the Sweetwater event (for the first time in eleven years of living 40 miles from it) Saturday. Pretty bizarre, yes. Huge source of revenue for the town, yes. Likely to ever be shut down by the Humane Society? No. But then this is very-friggin’-seriously redneck country out here.
The very strangest part was the huge number of toddlers and infants in attendance. I didn’t see any of them fed to snakes, though.
It’s been mentioned over the last few years on various snake documentaries that rattlesnake roundups are somewhat self-defeating. Rattlers with louder rattles or faster warnings are the ones that are most likely to be spotted and caught and killed. We may be accidentally breeding snakes that either don’t warn, or don’t warn loudly. That doesn’t seem to me to be a net benefit, even if I didn’t like snakes.
RE: “You were essentially making the fallacious argument “You have no right to criticize these people because you haven’t been through what I’ve been through.”
Nope. I criticise people who go on “snake whacking expeditions.” I do not go on “snake whacking expeditions.” I was referring only to my experience with snakes. And you are free to criticise me for whacking a snake in the cutlery drawer if you like.
But, let me assure you that due to the time period in which my snake experiences occurred, and the circumstances of that – plus the fact that I was a woman living in a very isolated rural environment, I think I made the best decision.
Praying for the snake to vacate the premises didn’t seem too rational, and going to bed with it tucked in the cutlery drawer all cosy and warm, didn’t seem too sensible either. Given the same circumstances, I would do the same thing. It was a decision based on risk assessment.
People in Texas routinely kill snakes. I have heard one of my coworkers (who lives in the country) talk about killing every single snake he sees, regardless of the type of snake it was. Of course those same coworkers also routinely kill stray cats and dogs. I am guessing in rural areas it is quite common. I definitely disapprove of routinely killing anything that is not immediately threatening to one’s person or killing anything you don’t intent to eat. I hear rattlesnakes taste like chicken though.
“I hear rattlesnakes taste like chicken though.”
The line to the Jaycee’s booth was too long for me to be able to confirm this.
Since Ann Richards and Molly Ivins died, there’s not one Texan I give a shit about, but I have a really sweet Royal Python that has more personality than your average redneck, so this just outrages me. My only hope is that these ignorant hicks are somehow pushing evolution to create a super-smart, super-hidey, super-quiet rattlesnake that decimates their cattle. I know evoluton can’t work miracles of justice, but if it could, that’s what would happen. Barring that, I guess a plague of rodents is the best I can hope for.
oooh super-hidey snake. sounds like fun…
well lets not jump on the bandwagon and say this is equivalent to killing feral cats. that is just plain old good fun and it’s good for the songbirds. but i’m open to the argument that this is a historical niche left open by the absence of bigger wild cats… but there are plenty of bobcats around here too. and coyotes. so what are a few kitty kitties in a hole in the ground? proof your gun is sighted in.
Wait a second. If we kill all the snakes, what are we supposed to handle?
Seriously. I thought that during the Messianic age, “the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’s den” (Isaiah 11:8). How can the children cuddle up with serpents if we whack all the serpents first? Zounds!
It was in the Mexican national news: in a certain county on the Chihuahua (my home state) mountains the rattlesnake population almost disappeared due to people killing them. Now they have a big plague of rats! The State Government was collecting as many cats as possible to send them there, in an attempt to control the plague. I don’t know if it ever worked.
Ah yes, bringing in exotic species to replace exterminated natural predators. That will end well. This is another great example of how some evolutionary knowledge could really wise people up. It’s not just organisms that evolve, but whole ecosystems, sometimes with a delicate homeostasis. You can’t just lop out one part of an ecosystem and replace it with another, any more than you can replace femur with a tibia. When myxomatosis (“rabbit fever”) was introduced into Australia in an effort to control the rabbit population, the result within a few generations was rabbits that resisted the disease, and a sublethal virus. Nature is all about the feedback loop, and our efforts to short-circuit the natural order don’t usually go well. We don’t have the cumulated “wisdom” of the millions of years of evolution that designed these ecosystems. Plus, we’re often greedy and stupid, which is quite a bit worse than an impersonal, blind process.
Eliminating rattlers is less likely to impact rodent populations than the reverse, but ecology really isn’t the issue. Neither is threat to people. I live 80 miles from Sweetwater, and I know 3 people here in my hometown of 90,000 with somatic damage from rattlesnake bite. The experience is painful and often crippling, but it also is fairly infrequent. Having been here for a lifetime, and knowing many livestock ranchers, I never have heard a complaint about livestock loss from rattler bite. It surely must occur, but no one out here is worrying about it. Every bit of such argumentation is nonsense. The problem here is the continuation of the “pioneer” attitude about land – the attitude that we remain in the phase of conquering nature rather than living with it. The vast majority of people out here can in many ways be pleasant, courteous, and helpful, but view rattlers, coyotes, etc., etc. as detriments to their or others livelihood.
Rattlesnake roundups are inhumane and senseless, but there isn’t a chance in hell of influencing enthusiasts against them. These people aren’t naturalists, scientists, or advocates of nature in any way other than as a source for production of food and fiber and some bizarre forms of entertainment.
The control of rodents argument won’t fly PZ. Drought, often severe within the past decade, does far more to control rodents. Rather, the people involved would be more admirable and thoughtful for not torturing any animals, including rattlesnakes.
#25 — Pennsylvania recently passed a law prohibiting bird shooting events such as used to be a big family fun event at Hegins, Penna.
If I don’t have snakes living in my attic, how will I keep the mice away?
How about one-armed culling?
http://www.onearmdovehunt.com/
Development around us has managed to get rid of most of the snakes — and yes, we are plagued by mice and rats.
At least we still have some hawks, but I think they prefer to eat the local bunnies.
What a waste is right …
I still remember a classmate of mine bringing a pet snake he had gotten from the local brush to school for show and tell or something. He seemed to be taking care of it well, but when he brought it out for recess or something the teacher on yard duty insisted that he fling it over the school fence into a dense brushy area near some railroad tracks. This is in Quebec, where there are no poisonous or crushing snakes of any sort, and yet the (alas, very ignorant) teacher insisted that the little garter snake was some horrible dangerous beast. Eventually she grabbed it or something and did it herself, as I recall. I was appalled then and still am.