Rattlesnake Roundups, Texans, and Other Idiots
Billy Brown, a Philadelphia naturalist, discusses a recent New York Times article that glorifies idiots Texans who participate in “brutal” rattlesnake roundups:
Every now and then, usually at a party, someone mentions a news story they heard about crazy people in Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia, maybe even Pennsylvania who catch lots of rattlesnakes and then throw big festivals.
They mean this in only the nicest way, but few topics set me off like the rattlesnake roundups. At this point in the conversation I take a deep breath and kindly explain that the roundups are brutal, savage, events in which thousands of rattlers are yanked out of burrows–many flushed out of burrows with gasoline, which kills all kinds of other small wildlife and pollutes the ground–then handled roughly and frequently injured as they’re dumped into huge heaps, tossed around in bagging contests, and then in the end get their heads chopped off.
