Scaling back on snake slaughter

IN Claxton, Georgia, USA, the annual rattlesnake roundup is being transformed into a “rattlesnake and wildlife festival”.

The reptiles will no longer be hunted down and killed for public entertainment. “We are moving towards an event which promotes co-existence and wildlife stewardship,” says Jessica du Bois, Humane Society director for Georgia.

Meanwhile, according to the New York Daily News, a thousand hunters converged on the Everglades last week to take part in the month-long Python Challenge in which dozens of snakes will be killed.

Rattlesnake roundups, or “rodeos”, are held in Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, as well as Georgia. The unfortunate creatures are dragged from their dens on wire hooks or forced out when petrol or other toxic substances are sprayed into their burrows. The snakes may be kept for weeks, without food or water, in dirty crowded boxes. Then they are taken out in front of a cheering crowd to be ill-treated and decapitated, as criminals and heretics were in the Middle Ages. Some are used in dare-devil acts.

The largest roundup takes place in Sweetwater, Texas. The three-day festival, according to Fred Grimm of the Miami Herald, draws “about 30,000 apparent lunatics to a dusty town in the middle of Texas”.

“Along with the holocaust, is a Miss Snake Charmer, although the title is a bit of a misnomer given that the pageant winners are required to decapitate a rattlesnake.”

“Tomorrow I get to skin snakes and chop their heads off. I’m super excited about it,” declared 16-year-old Laney Wallace, the 2011 winner. Hunters are paid $5 per lb of snake brought in. It’s thought that about 1% of the snakes in Texas are slaughtered annually.

The Humane Society of the United States wants these public spectacles to cease. It has congratulated the Evans County Wildlife Club on not taking any more snakes from the wild at Claxton. Instead, the festival will celebrate rattlesnakes and “promote stewardship of Georgia’s wildlife and eco-systems”.

Roundups began as snake control measures for farmers but is there any justification for them nowadays? The United States has about 20 species of venomous reptile, of which 16 are rattlesnakes. The famous rattle warns off would-be victims. Scales form hollow sound-boxes which produce the loud and distinctive signal when the tail is shaken. It’s remarkable that a totally deaf creature should have evolved such a strategy. A rattler won’t attack unless it feels threatened and, if treated promptly, bites are rarely fatal.

While over 30,000 Americans are killed by firearms each year, about 20 die from snake bites. Pet dogs kill around 30 people and there are some 50 fatalities from bee stings.

Another snake species is being persecuted in Florida. Encouraged by the local Fish and Wildlife Service, 400 gun-toting snake killers waded into the Everglades in the 2013 Python Challenge last week. Burmese pythons from Asia, among the six largest snakes in the world, have become popular pets. The constrictors, which can reach a length of six metres, become increasingly difficult to keep as they get older. Owners release them, illegally, into the huge wetland known as the Everglades, where there is now a self- sustaining population of these aliens.

Pythons are non-venomous. They are fearful of people and harmless, although pet ones occasionally bite their handlers. In 1867, keeper John Supple was bitten by one in Dublin Zoo. According to historian Catherine de Courcy, he reacted to the incident and died of congestion of the lungs, “accelerated by alarm created on his having been bitten by a serpent the same day”. Pythons may be no threat to people in the Everglades but, being at the top of the food chain, they rival the native alligators and, it’s thought, have a generally adverse effect on the eco-system.

Despite their size, pythons are so well camouflaged that it is almost impossible to spot one. Coiled up motionless, they were pointed out to me by locals in India on two occasions. Nonetheless, in 2009, over 1,200 pythons were taken from the National Park area of the Everglades alone. The competitor who brings in the biggest snake this year will receive $1,000.