DAILY NEWS (Alamogordo, New Mexico) 18 April 05 Rattling attendees no surprise (Michael Shinabery)
Like most people, Jackie Bibby has a hobby.
Unlike most, Bibby’s has taken him around the world, onto top TV shows (“Tonight Show,” “Sally Jesse Raphael,” “Rikki Lake,” “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not”), and earned him four world records.
Bibby is the Texas Snakeman. For 37 years he’s performed with deadly snakes.
“I ain’t got enough sense to be scared,” Bibby said on Saturday as he prepared to perform for the sixth year at Tom Moore’s Rattlesnake Roundup. “I’m 54 years old, bald and fat, and I’m having the time of my life.”
While such events are common throughout Bibby’s native Texas, Moore’s is New Mexico’s only roundup.
Bibby first stepped into the arena in 1969 in Brownwood, Texas, the second year the Jaycees there staged rattlesnake sacking. He pointed out the Jaycees invented the sport. Not surprisingly, this year he won the competition again.
One of his four world records is for sacking or stuffing 10 rattlers into a bag in 17.11 seconds. His other three are for sitting in a bathtub with 81 rattlers, sharing a sleeping bag with 109 of the deadly reptiles, and suspending eight in his mouth by their tails.
Photo: The Kiss of death – Snake handler Britt Stevens kisses an Egyptian cobra on the head in a snake handling demonstration during the annual Rattlesnake Roundup Saturday at the Otero County Fairgrounds. (Ellis Neel)
Along with his four records Bibby’s earned more than 100 trophies, and $10,000 on TV recently for the rattlenakes-in-mouth stunt. From among 40,000 records in the Guinness Book of World Records, readers voted Bibby the sixth most popular.
He’s also been bitten eight times. A deformed left thumb attests to the consequences. He explained venom breaks down muscle tissue so the snake can digest prey.
Before Saturday’s first show Bibby, wearing his trademark black bowler hat, and his handlers moved among dozens of snakes gathered from area dens. More than one snapped gaping jaws at boots and jeans.
“That’s a telephone snake. It wants to reach out and touch somebody,” Bibby said. “You can’t train these snakes. They’re untrainable. You can’t teach them anything. They’re not smart enough. They act on instinct.”
Nonstop rattling sounded like heavy rain.
“It’s like any sport,” he said of his mental--preparation process. “I like to say I’m the Brett Favre of rattlesnake sacking.”
Before long, fans began jostling for the best seats.
“What happens when you take crazy people and mix them liberally with rattlesnakes? You get our show,” Bibby said. “We do lots of fun and unusual stuff, but it’s stuff we do all the time.”
He hung the rattlers from his mouth and kissed an Egyptian cobra, the same kind of asp he said killed Cleopatra. Accomplishing what he called the “Kiss of Death” wasn’t easy. The cobra wasn’t cooperative. It attacked a hat Bibby held out, leaving a wet smear of neurotoxic venom.
“Snakes are like anything else. They’ve got a personality. Some are aggressive. Some are passive,” he said. “None of the snakes you see today are altered in any way. They do have their fangs. They do leave their venom.”
Among each other the handlers pitched and caught rattlesnakes. They held aloft rattlers so attendees could see venom dripping from fangs.
“Never touch one of these snakes in the wild or any other snake. Don’t throw rocks at them or poke them with a stick,” Bibby said.
To show how fast a rattler strikes, one handler stuck a balloon in his mouth which the snake attacked and popped.
Bibby stressed safety such as what not to do when confronted by poisonous snakes.
“We do always try to do education with all the daredevil stuff,” he said.
He demonstrated how to extract oneself from them when he crawled headfirst into a sleeping bag filled with rattlers, then slowly exited. He explained rapid movement triggers strikes.
He and his handlers do duct tape their pants cuffs.
“Having experienced it myself,” Bibby said, “let me assure you when you’ve got a snake in your pants, your pants get pretty crowded.”
“One guy threatened to shoot me with a shotgun,” Bibby said. “I wish they could disagree without being so disagreeable.”
Protesters at Moore’s event simply talked with those who would listen. At one point a black pickup truck roared by perilously close.
“That was for our benefit,” Broadfoot Taylor said.
Taylor objects to the environmental damage he said removing snakes creates.
“You strip an area of snakes and you affect the formation of that ecosystem,” he said, pointing out rattlers prey on rodents that carry such deadly diseases as hantavirus. “If you really care about the environment you don’t just defend the cute and cuddly animals.”
Remove snakes, he said, and “you have an explosion in rodents. It creates an imbalance which nature has to correct, but it takes time. We suffer the consequences when they (snake hunters) tend to take the better specimens.”
Rattlesnakes kill coyotes as well, he said, and when coyote populations increase he said “ranchers ... want to spend more tax dollars” reducing the animals’ numbers.
“You pull something out as important to ecosystems, the law of unintended consequences comes into play,” Taylor said.
Taylor did say he supports “sustenance hunting” for food. He does not, though, support “trophy” hunting.
“To kill an animal just to take its skin is immoral,” he said. “Every other predator except for humans is a beneficial hunter.”
“I don’t hurt animals,” Bibby said. “I don’t ever kill snakes myself. I used to; I don’t anymore. I eat cows. I don’t hate cows. It just happens to be something I eat.”
Taylor also decried those who purchase snakes from the show just to release them back into the wild. While such intentions are good, he said that only does “more damage.” He described rattlesnakes as indigenous to individual dens, carrying snake viruses not necessarily found in all populations. Intermixing, he said, only spreads viruses which further weakens the species.
Bibby’s 2005 schedule includes plans to break three of his four records, and performing at Willie Nelson’s annual July fourth picnic in Texas.
Rattling attendees no surprise