ALTUS TIMES (Oklahoma) 30 April 05 One reporter gets prepped for Mangum Rattlesnake Round-up (Christine Gacharn)
Mangum : Reporter's note to self: don't wear sandals and capris on the morning you go to interview rattlesnake handlers.
I am instructed not to stand up against the makeshift holding bin filled with Western Diamondback rattlesnakes, but rather to step back five or six inches in the unlikely yet possible event that one of the snakes might strike at me through the mesh screen. I dutifully comply, listening to the white noise of rattlers that almost sounded like a machine running in the background of a small, industrial building.
Just a guess that in the 40 years the Shortgrass Rattlesnake Association has been hosting this annual event, most of you Townies (as we military folks affectionately call our local hosts) have probably seen, heard or read about it and have become relatively desensitized to the truly amazing art of rattlesnake handling. But to me, a military family member who moves to a different state, country or culture every three years, I was downright awestruck Thursday morning in Mangum with my preview of this weekend's annual Rattlesnake Derby. Indulge me here, because what these men are doing is pretty phenomenal when you stop to think about it, even if you have already seen it done.
I grew up "out West," as my Southern friends would say, which has its healthy share of rattlesnakes. I've lived in places where "diamondbacks" were popular mascots for sports teams and had family and friends (and family friends) in the ranching business who regularly stumbled over rattlesnakes in their line of work; I've seen 1-inch rattles handed around the store, a trophy of sorts, admired and measured and compared and sometimes turned into keyrings or jewelry or trinkets; and I've seen kids, adults and even respectable cowboys reduced to a whimper in the face of a rattlesnake.
What I had never seen until Thursday is an entire room filled with, "ah, maybe 400" Western Diamondbacks rattlesnakes, many of them easily several feet long; rattles many inches long; fangs up close and personal; and the true, literal meaning of "speaking with a forked tongue" and "dripping with venom."
"Wanna get in here with me?" asks handler Steve Young, as he climbs into the holding bin. I glance down at my feet and note how ridiculous my bare ankles and red toenail polish look against the backdrop of this scene. Surely he must be kidding, I think, because he has no reason to trust I'm even remotely qualified to play in his arena.
"Here, you can borrow my boots if you want to go in," offers holder Harvey Moore.
Maybe they're serious. I consider a moment whether I'd go into that holding bin even if I had been wearing my husband's steel-toed combat boots.
"I'm not necessarily afraid of rattlesnakes, but I do have a healthy respect for that being their territory, and this being mine," I tell them, pointing to the invisible 5-inch safety line that separates me from the mesh screen, behind which all those rattlesnakes and now the denim-and-boot-clad Young are moving around.
Young explains to me that he was 14ish when he first started rattlesnake hunting with his cousin, using sticks. When he got "older and smarter," he says, he started using snake handler's tools.
"We really promote safety," says Young, adding that he takes his 12- and 7-year-olds snake hunting. "That's how confident I am that it's safe."
Understanding what a snake is going to do, Young explains, makes it easier for people to come across them in the wild. For example, snakes want their prey live, and they prefer to kill it themselves. Snakes don't see well, so they rely on their senses to detect heat from prey. A rattlesnake will sense immediately that a human is much too large for it to eat, so its instinct is not to attack but to recoil. However, a rattlesnake that feels threatened will strike at a human in self-defense. The rattles on its tail serve to alert potential predators to approach only at the risk of a strike.
A rattlesnake's fangs are similar to a syringe, I learned, hollow on the inside with an ultra sharp tip. The sticky, protein packed venom travels through the fang and, once it's plunged into the victim, into the victim's bloodstream. Interestingly, the best anecdote to rattlesnake venom is not a tourniquet, but composure. The faster the victim's blood starts pumping, the faster the poison will be carried throughout the body. Cutting a rattlesnake wound will only increase the blood supply to the wound, which will only increase the venom in the bloodstream. The safest plan is to use a snakebite kit if available, keep the bitten limb lower than the heart, stay calm and move slowly, and seek immediate medical attention.
Rattlesnake safety is, in fact, what the nine, all-volunteer directors of the Shortgrass Rattlesnake Association pride themselves in promoting. Young has been bitten only once by a rattlesnake, although it was a "dry bite," meaning no venom entered his bloodstream, "so really it only counts as a close call."
"We don't have a White Fang club," Young says, referring to other rattlesnake handlers who consider bites prestigious. "Around here, it's a prestigious thing NOT to be bitten!"
Forty years ago, what started out as a local flea market and garage sale quickly evolved into the Rattlesnake Derby of today. Where the derby was once dependent on snakehandlers from outside the association, the locals are now impressively proficient. But this weekend isn't just about four or five guys messing around with snakes Mangum expects to host some 30,000 visitors at the antique and flea market, arts and crafts fair, carnival and music show. The derby expects to yield 2,000 pounds of rattlesnake meat (roughly 3.000 snakes), and prizes will be given to people who bring in the biggest, heaviest and most Western Diamondback rattlesnakes. Every inch of the snake is consumed or utilized in some way.
"The only thing we don't use on the snake is its breath," says Jerry "Grizzly" Walker, who alongside Young and Moore, President Jack Cossey, Robbie Clark, G.W. Sheward, Fang Master Keith Kendall and Mary Sheppard make up the board of directors for the association.
"Why do people bungee jump? Why do people jump off of cliffs into water?" Young asks. "This is my bungee jumping. It's quite a rush."
By the time Young climbed out of the holding bin and joined me and the other handlers (strategically positioned, now that I think about it, on either side of me) on the people-side of the mesh, I was feeling the rush. For the rest of the day, I couldn't shut up about it, telling everybody who would listen about the snakes and the men who handle them, just 30 minutes up the road.
For more information on this weekend's events, visit rattlesnakederby.orgfree.com or call 580-782-2434.
One reporter gets prepped for Mangum Rattlesnake Round-up