Rattlesnake Roundup

Wikieup, AZ. is a bump in the road on the highway from Kingman, AZ. to Las Vegas. The town is known for its all-night diner, it's cute waitresses, and the rattlesnake roundups that are held several times per year to rid the desert of excessive vipers.

There are a lot of rattlesnakes in the Wikieup area.

One of the restaurants has the skin of an eight-foot rattler draped above the cash register. My friend Dave Molina had stopped in Wikieup for a cup of coffee while driving to Las Vegas for the weekend. When the waitress came around to refill our cups, she said, 'Are you boys gonna get involved in the rattlesnake roundup? It starts in an hour. If you catch the biggest rattler in three hours, you win $500.'

Huh?

She nodded. 'We're all gonna try for the cash money. My boy friend's a cook and the boss is giving him three hours off to go after those rattlers.'

An Arizona university was sponsoring the roundup and all rattlers that were caught would be shipped to the university where the snakes would be milked of their venom, which was being used in cancer research.

It was 1 p.m. I looked at my partner. 'What do you say,?' I asked him. We voted to engage in the rattlesnake roundup.

At 1:45 p.m., we all gathered at the rear of the café. The owner laid out the plans. Anyone who caught a rattler would bring it back to the restaurant where it would be measured and caged. Dave and I had twisted a couple of coat hangers into snake-trapping devices that might work.

I turned to another waitress. Pam was cute with red hair and freckles. 'Where do you recommend that we start hunting?' I said.

She waved her hand. 'Any place south of the parking lot is ripe territory,' she said. 'This is rattlesnake country.'

Sure enough, a tourist from California found the first rattler. His wife almost stepped on the second one.

We worked the fields and the rocks for hours as the sun rose in the Western sky. I noticed a subtle movement and yelled, 'Dave, watch out...'

He stepped back as a rattler that might have been four feet long coiled itself near a boulder. I eased my loop over the snake's head and tightened the string.

'I got it,' I shouted.

Very carefully, we eased the snake back to the restaurant where some makeshift cages had been set up. A cook was there taking down names and measuring the snakes.

'Yours is pretty close to the leader,' he said. He measured the rattler, then shook his head. 'Sorry. You're an inch short of the mark.'

We hunted rattlesnakes until 5 p.m. Finally the group of snake hunters began breaking up. We headed back to the café.

A small man wearing glasses and a sports jacket had caught the largest rattler. He was a high school teacher from Roswell, N.M. I congratulated him for winning the $500.

'This will be great for my show-and-tell,' he said, pocketing the money. 'Snakes have always fascinated me.'

'Coffee for the road," I told Pam.. 'It's 100 miles to poker.'