went down to the county fair and saw a rattlesnake handler do his demonstration.....IT WAS COOL! but a little frightening at the same time.
these were Western Diamondback rattlers from Texas. He had one small male who was incredibly irritable - he was popping balloons with his lightening fast fangs. The guy did not handle this snake at all - used the hooks only.
he had a good size male and female that he handled with hooks and demonstrating the 'Tubing' procedure.
He had a very large male who tolerated the handling and was clearly very mellow - hardly rattled his tail at all, but was sampling the air and very curious at the same time. The handler wore plastic gloves (like surgical gloves) to handle the snake - said that the oils on his hands irritate the animals.
the snakes were sooooo interesting! wide triangular heads, very active rattles of all sizes. They definitely had different rattling patterns - there was this slow deliberate sounding rattle, and a really high frequency rattle. you could tell what was on the snake's mind by the sound it seemed!
The whole thing was done inside a plexiglass 'fence' type thing that was about 4 feet tall. He often lifted the snakes high up so people could see them better. I was about 3 feet away from the whole thing.
the best part was when he moved the barrels around...he had about 6 snakes in these two plastic barrels...when they got moved all the snakes would start rattling like crazy! It sounded so fake but I looked in one of the barrels and sure enough they were shaking their tails and making all the noise themselves!
anyway, that's as close as I ever want to come. beautiful animals but that guy is nuts for taking them in his hands IMO
Reply With Quote
sounds kinda funny though; most kids around here have horses, pigs, goats etc. for 4-H projects.. imagine some kid going with a rattler! His farming parents would be shocked!
