Snakes Alive!

My opinion of rattlesnakes was colored early in life by western movies and TV shows that always depicted rattlers in a very negative light. I have only run into one rattlesnake while working, and I didn't give it a chance let me know its disposition. A family vacation among rattlers several years ago changed my attitude about rattlesnakes. Every campsite we used for a week was populated by rattlesnakes, and we quickly learned that they would slither away from us if we gave them a chance, and just left them alone. Of course, we always kept the tents zipped shut, and used a light if we had to go out at night. Ernie Pyle told in his writings that he wasn't afraid of being bitten by a snake; he was afraid of SEEING a snake. Knowing how Ernie felt about snakes, the post he wrote in Chapter VI of "Home Country" must have been a white knuckle experience. Cactus Country Rudy Hale and his wife lived alone back of their little store fifty miles east of Yuma, and there was no one else for miles. Three steps from their door and you were ankle deep in bare sand. The Hales caught live rattlesnakes for a living. To me that would be ten thousand times worse than death. But they enjoyed it. The Arizona sands are filthy with rattlers. Rudy and his wife worked the desert for snakes as a farmer works his land for crops. Rattlers built them a place to live, rattlers kept them in food and clothing, rattlers provided the start for their little gas and grocery business. They loved rattlers. Rudy was born in Illinois of German parentage, and he still had an accent. He was brought up with the idea of being a surgeon. A relative sent him to school abroad and he studied medicine in Austria for years. When the relative died, his schooling stopped and his life turned. He wound up in California, where he worked for twenty years as a master mechanic. Then carbon monoxide laid him out and he went to the Arizona desert for his health. It was after two years there that the Hales came right up against it and had to turn to snakes for a living. They started out by advertising in a San Diego paper. Before they knew it they were swamped with orders. They sold snakes to zoos all over the country, to private collectors, to medical centers for serum, to state reptile farms, to the Mayo brothers. "They say there aren't snakes in Ireland," said Mrs. Hale. "But I know there are, because we've shipped snakes to Ireland." They didn't even use forked sticks to catch snakes-just picked them up with bare hands and put them in a box slung over the shoulder. They usually hunted snakes for an hour after daylight and an hour before dark. In eight years they had caught approximately twenty thousand rattlers. Rudy had caught as many as fifty sidewinders in one hour's hunting. They had the desert cleaned almost bare of snakes for twenty miles around. There are twelve species of rattlers in that part of Arizona. The sidewinder is the most deadly, and the Hales specialized in sidewinders. They used to get fifty cents apiece for them. "I just wish I could get fifty cents agian," Rudy said. "They're down to twenty cents now." The most he ever got for a snake was seven dollars; that was a rare Black Mountain rattler. He said the huge snakes didn't bring as much as medium-sized ones. They were harder to keep in captivity, and zoos didn't want them. Hale had caught rattlers as big around as his leg. He had caught them so big that they'd overpower him and pull his arms together, and he'd have to throw them away from him and then pick them up and try again. "I'm careful not to hurt a snake,' he said. "Any snake I ship is a good healthy snake." Both Hale and his wife would let rattlers crawl all over them. She even carried them around in her pockets. Neither of them had ever been bitten, but her brother had. He was bitten five times, quick as a flash, by a nest of sidewinders. He didn't say a word-just went and lay down in the sand, flat on his back. stretched out his arms, shut his eyes, and lay there still as death for half an hour. Then he went back to work. Nothing ever happened. The Hales said that most people who died of snakebite really died of fright. Mrs. Hale's brother sat down on a rattler once. One time Rudy himself stepped right into the middle of a huge coiled rattler; his foot slipped and fell down among the coils, but for some reason he wasn't bitten. There's no danger if you watch your business, Hale said. You mustn't be thinking about anything else when you're picking up a sidewinder. He said the hand was quicker than a snake's strike, and if you missed him the first grab you could jerk back in time. Lots of times when they saw a rattler coiled they would just ease up and slide a hand through the sand under it and lift it up right in the palm of the hand, still coiled. Rudy had only one sidewinder on hand the day I was there. It was in a roofless concrete tank behind the house. He took me out for a look after dark and turned on a dim little electric light. He took a stick with a nail in it and got the sidewinder hooked over the nail, and had it lifted almost to the top of the tank. Just then his little red dog stuck it cold nose up my pants leg. I let out a yell and landed somewhere way over the other side of Gila Bend, and never did go back after the car." Excerpt from "Home Country" by Ernie Pyle, William Sloane Associates, Inc., New York, 1947