The Rattlesnake Roundup has been a Sweetwater staple for the last 63 years. Hosted by the Sweetwater Jaycees, a nonprofit in town, the community expects this event year after year.
Travis Gardner, the president of the Jaycees, stands in the center of thousands of slithering rattlesnakes. His pants are duct taped at the ankle to prevent a snake from slithering up his pant leg. They use this weekend-long event to educate the community on the venomous animals.
“I’ve always said if I can stop one kid from ever getting bit, then I’ve done my job,” Gardner said, talking over the rattle of the snakes.
Gardner estimates he’s standing in about 3,100 pounds of snakes. He said five years ago, they rounded up over 24,000 pounds of snakes, and decided they needed to cap it off at 3,000 to 5,000 a year.
“We don’t want to eradicate the rattlesnake,” Gardner explained. “We want to teach people and help maintain the population the best we can.”
Each one of these rattlesnakes is studied, milked for venom and skinned. There’s a booth for each step where attendees can watch and learn. At one station, a snake handler entices a rattle snake to pierce a balloon, showing off how rattlesnakes strike at their enemies.
Small businesses in Sweetwater rely on the annual event to bring in revenue. While it wasn’t cancelled because of the pandemic, the event has been affected according to local vendor James Smith, who said he’s seen a dip in attendance from last year.
“If it wasn’t for this, this little old town would be dried up and empty,” Smith said. “It pulls a lot of money into this town. Through the years, people from everywhere.”
Charlot Ingraham is included in people who traveled for the event. It’s her first time at the roundup and she came ready, head-to-toe in camouflage with American flag accessories, and full of questions about the reptiles.
“It’s something exciting,” Ingraham said. “I’m going to all these animal things because I love animals.”
Not all animal lovers appreciate this event though. Kristen Rickman, the cruelty casework emergency response division manager for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, better known as PETA, thinks the event is outdated and wrong.
“There’s no need to use live animals for awareness training,” Rickman said. “It’s a positive way to keep folks from having negative interactions with snakes, but there’s absolutely no reason that you need a live snake to do that.”
But to Rob McCann, who’s worked with the Jaycees for 28 years and is the public relations director, the live animal interaction is vital to both education and population control.
“We aren’t trying to kill a species. We just harvest enough of the species to put on the Roundup,” McCann said. “Our kids play in the backyards here.”
Rattlesnake education is something near and dear to McCann’s heart. He’s seen firsthand how detrimental a rattlesnake bite can be - it could result in tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills. McCann would rather prepare people than not.
“It’s not a matter of if you see a rattlesnake, it’s when you’ll see a rattlesnake. So we try to teach people how to live with a rattlesnake,” McCann said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 7,000 to 8,000 people are bit by venomous snakes every year in the United States. Of those strikes, only five result in death.
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