I recently acquired my first “Hot” a Crotalus mitchelli. I have always had a fascination with Crotalus since I was a young kid. I used to read a lot and had read Kauffeld and that’s about all you need as a little kid to get your head going!
I didn’t start out with Rattlesnakes but a Prairie King at the age of 9 after begging and educating my parents for at least a year. After a few years of keeping many different types of reptiles and acquiring a somewhat large collection of 50 or so reptiles I started to set my sites on Crotalus, especially after finding and letting them go in the field. Although I respected my parent’s wishes of not bringing any venomous snakes in the household, I came up with a solution.
At the age of 15, I am not sure how I made the acquaintance of a Herpetologist by the name of Al Robbins but I ended up talking with him via phone several times over a course of couple of months. One weekend he invited myself as well as my mother to his house to meet him and see his collection. I was amazed at what he kept in his garage. He had about a dozen various venomous snakes ranging from Atrox to Monocled Cobras. It was a pretty amazing site to see his extensive preserved collection as well.
We had talked about the surgery that he had been performing on his animals and before you know it I was handling a 5’ Atrox with my bare hands. HOW CRAZY IS THAT! My mother even held the snake briefly. I had held Rattlesnakes before but never allowing their heads to move freely unrestrained. I was thrilled. All I had to do was catch a Rattlesnake and bring it to Al and I had my venomoid!
Well it never happened. To be honest with you I can’t really remember why I didn’t follow through with it. I would like to say I did some research, talked to a few more people about it but again I am not sure what changed my mind. I continued to keep reptiles up until I was 20 or so due to living a nomadic lifestyle. I have since settled down, bought my own home and recently got back into reptiles. I will be thirty next month and I am so glad that I have waited until now to acquire a Hot.
I have done a lot of thinking and seeing the venomoid issue brought up so many times I would like to contribute in making it known that venomoid surgery is absolutely wrong.
I can list all the reasons that it’s wrong but they have been laid out here and elsewhere many times. Taking a knife to an animal to cut or destroy it’s natural way of surviving for our pleasure of holding it or making one feel comfortable keeping it is wrong.
Promoting venomoid surgery whether done by a professional or not keeps this practice going and it needs to be stopped.
Please don’t allow an impulse and selfish decision to contribute to the ongoing practices of venomoid surgery.
Sincerely,
Brett Thacker
