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| You don't scare me, all I see is dollar signs. |
I told you about bringing a baby rattlesnake school and at the time our town had a lot of like barren ground full of rattlesnakes. There were plenty more rattlers to go around. They were all over in the summer and once my friend and I were out hiking in the foothills when we came across a big rattlesnake that had startled some horses.
The riders warned us that there was a great big snake in the road up ahead. Instead of steering clear we reassured the riders we knew how to catch and kill rattlesnakes and we would be fine. They took some nine-year-old's word for it and rode on. We found the snake, it was about 3 feet long, and we decided right away to kill it. We used the old forked stick trick, pinned its head, killed it with a rock and brought it home.
We skinned it, gutted it, and cut its head off because that part is still dangerous even after they are dead. You have got to be safe. We stretched out the skin and salted it to tan it. Then we dipped the head in lacquer and added a wire so that we could have a rattlesnake head necklace. My dad's friend saw our beautiful hide and rattle and bought it from us for $25 and we later sold the head to a kid in school for 10$ more.
Once we saw the kind of money there was in processing God's creatures into brick-a-brack we started up a little side business trying to become rattlesnake millionaires. This was terrible news for the local rattlesnakes, we went hunting every day and killed about 30 to 40 rattlesnakes that year. We would bring them home skin, mount, tack, the skins then take the rattles and head and dip them in lacquer. We sold them all except what we kept for our personal collections. We never found one as big as the first but we also never got bit and died so it was win-lose.
The next year my friend and I found faster ways to make money so we gave up active rattlesnake hunting. Sure, we would take one if the opportunity presented itself, would be criminal not to. Rattlesnake hunting was a good time and I still remember fondly sending the little bastards back to heaven.
