SWEETWATER, Texas -- Bill Ransberger used to be scared of snakes, but it is only since he learned to handle them 20 years ago that he has been bitten -- 42 times now.
The West Texas rattlesnake handler's fang time with the Western Diamondback is the price he has paid for co-founding an annual rite of spring here dubbed the "World's Largest Rattlesnake Roundup."Once a year, hunters swarm out from the town of Sweetwater to pull hundreds of rattlesnakes from dens in the rocky West Texas plains. More than 30,000 spectators come to watch the snakes weighed, milked for venom, killed, skinned and cooked.
"Rattlesnakes are kind of a hobby, an interesting hobby," said Ransberger, 74, a retired locomotive engineer for the Santa Fe railroad. "It makes your adrenaline run. It's like a guy going fishing," he said about what motivates men -- and women -- to go poking into rattlers' pits.
He spoke to a reporter on the sawdust-covered floor of the Sweetwater rodeo arena where hunters at this month's event brought in their plastic garbage cans, barrels and boxes full of live snakes. A steady low buzz permeated the air from the rattles of dozens of snakes piled on top of each other in a big enclosure on the arena floor.
Booths around the arena sell every kind of imaginable snake trinkets from rattle or snakehead key chains to preserved rattlesnakes mounted in a coiled striking position. They even sell rattlesnake gall bladders.
"We get Asian visitors who want the gall bladders. They boil them up as an aphrodisiac," said Ted Thomas, an organizer from the local Jaycees business club that took over running the event from area ranchers in 1958.
Ransberger, one of those original Jaycees, said he was always scared of snakes but overcame his fear with the help of some tips from visiting snake hunters from Oklahoma that year.
"Since then I've been bit 42 times. The last time was in 1993 handling snakes here (at the roundup) so I retired. The snakes were getting quicker," he said.
In another enclosure in the arena, rattlesnakes' jaws are forced open over a funnel, allowing venom to be "milked" from the fangs. The yellowish fluid sells for about $1 a drop for medical uses including treatment of heart attacks and strokes.
Rattlesnake roundups are a staple of spring in many rural Texas communities but Sweetwater's is considered the largest, usually bringing in 3,000 to 4,000 pounds of Western Diamondbacks as long as six or seven feet .
The three-day festival, which kicks off with a Miss Snake Charmer pageant and includes a chili cook-off and gun show, brings an estimated $6 million to $8 million in revenue to this ranching and industrial town of about 12,000 people. Motels fill up and nightly dances draw a big crowd in a town that has more than 50 churches and just three bars.
Sweetwater's snake handlers all come from among the 200 Jaycees, learning over the years how to grip the vipers behind the jaw and on top of the skull to immobilize their fangs.
"I started milking the snakes because I had to find me an indoor job," said Davis Sager, holding a specimen by its head and body as he talked. "I used to be a (snake hunt) guide but it was rougher clambering around rocks all day with the snakes out there than milking them here."
Next to the milking pit is the butchering station where snakes are summarily beheaded on a wooden block and hung up to be skinned. The skins are sold commercially and the meat is cut up for frying and tasting at a concession stand.
At a card table in back, the incoming rattlers are weighed and amounts noted on each hunter's tally, with a winner declared every year for the most pounds collected.
Rules are simple: the snakes must be Western Diamondbacks and they must be alive and undamaged. They can come from anywhere but most are gathered in a 60-mile radius of Sweetwater, about 200 miles west of Fort Worth.
The hunt started in the 1950s as a community effort to get rid of what was seen as a hazard to ranch livestock.
"If a horse gets bit it's probably ruined for good even if it doesn't usually die. The horse will always be skittish after that," Ransberger said.
Grazing cattle that surprise a rattler may be bitten in the nose or head and may choke as the venom swells surrounding tissue. A veterinarian can treat the problem but at a cost as high as $1,500 a case.
Rattlers are also considered a threat to people, even coming into town sometimes to nest in backyards and under porches, although the snake handlers say the reptiles are not aggressive. "They won't chase you down and bite you. If you give 'em half a chance they'll back away," Ransberger said.
He ran the snake handling demonstration in the arena for most of 20 years, keeping them at bay on a table with specially shaped sticks, and sometimes found his assistants more dangerous than the snakes because they were show-offs or drinkers.
"Drinking and rattlesnakes don't mix, that's true," he said. "Now when you get through handling rattlesnakes, go have your drink. You don't get drunk and go handle snakes."