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PRESS-ENTERPRISE (Riverside, California) 30 April 05 A snake slayer's role - They secure the hills above the Ramona Bowl during performances (Adam C. Hartmann)
Hemet : You want to get the head.
That's sage snake advice from Wayne "Butch" Snow, the wrangler who helps protect the child actors in "Ramona" from the snakes in the hills above the Ramona Bowl.
Armed with a 6-foot stick sporting two metal prongs a few inches apart, Snow is part of an 11-member snake crew that stands guard over the 300 children in the cast. He also belongs to the Rock Indian Committee, a group of adult volunteers who supervise the children, among other things.
The children jump from behind rocks on the hillside at one point during the play, but snakes have been known to slither among the same rocks and along the same paths as the child actors.
Enter Snow and his crew.
What Snow and his crew do isn't illegal, state fish and game officials say. And while Snow said most snakes simply "mosey on away," some don't. That's when Snow, a Valle Vista resident, prepares to put another notch in his rutted killing stick.
His method for killing wayward snakes is simple.
The child actors signal the crew by putting their brightly-colored blankets over a rock, Snow said. Then it's a race against time.
"We hotfoot it there real quick," Snow said.
The idea is to trap the snake with the pronged stick and cut its head off with a knife, Snow said. He buries the heads because the snakes' fangs are still venomous, he said.
"If you're lucky, (the stick's prongs) will pop their head off," said Snow, 48.
Though he has nothing against the snakes, Snow knows he's not on any environmentalists' Christmas-card lists.
"We don't have a choice," Snow said. "When there's people out here, we've gotta take (snakes) out."
A dead snake was barbecued last Saturday at a makeshift camp near the Cast House, said San Jacinto resident Vicki Underwood, who is in her first year as chairwoman of the Rock Indian Committee.
"I put my meat on a separate grill," Underwood said.
Though Underwood said she "won't eat it raw or cooked," rookies on the crew have to take a bite of a raw snake, Snow said.
"(It's) a rite of passage," Underwood said, but Snow was more direct.
"That's dinner," he said.
No one has been hurt by a snake in Underwood's memory, but there have been some close calls, like the year Alessandro almost stepped on a snake, she said.
Snow said the snake patrol once nabbed 11 snakes in one day, and he once killed a 6-foot snake, now memorialized in a picture on his wall.
The Rock Indian children have some snake stories of their own.
Cassidy Laughy, 7, last year's Rock Indian of the Year, said she hasn't seen a snake in the hills yet. She knows what she would do if she ever saw one, though.
"I would want to scream," Laughy said, squinting her eyes. Then she would put her blanket over a rock, she said.
Colin Roripaugh, 16, said he was coming down the back side of the hill last year when, at the last moment, he was feet-to-fangs with a snake.
"It freaked me out," Roripaugh said. "I'm a snake fan, just not when they're lunging at me."
A snake slayer's role

I hope every time he is able to run and get them fast enough before the snakes chase the children and catch them in their venomous fangs.

Isn't true that is you don't bury the head of a rattle snake the body will go looking for it and once it finds it they will then seek out the person who cut their head off?

At least they are doing the right thing by teaching children the proper red blanket technique.

What a great thing to teach kids, how to fear snakes and kill them.
I hope he gigs his foot.

I'm sure there is a better way to handle that then jsut killing the snakes...He is obviously not afraid to come up to the snake..he should just get a hook and put the thing in a box and relocate them...But I guess thats asking too much...Great thing they are teaching the kids..Be afraid of snakes..they are the enemy..kill them all. Sad and unfortunate.

I was at a family festival today..educating people on rattlesnakes that are int he area and ways to avoid sankes and what to do if they find one...Its amazing how many people were completely afraid to even go into the outdoors because of them...Only had a couple people who were really spoke of taking a shovel to them..I generally had a pretty good response and a lot of people were happy to learn about them..>Even had some people that didn't even know they were around here. I was disappointed in the nature center in my city..they make no mention of any rattlesnakes..jsut the kingsnake..oh well..As long as I reached one person it was worth it to me.
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Kevin