Man Charged for Throwing Rattlesnake in Bar

[zoobyshoe]

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Rattlesnake Tosser Charged
- Associated Press
Thursday, June 17, 2004
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho -- A man accused of tossing a rattlesnake into a bar has been charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon.
Rodger Hunter, 28, was arrested Monday night and charged Tuesday. Witness Jeff Hewit said minutes after a man walked into Chic's Lounge, he pulled a 3-foot-6-inch snake from his pocket, threw it into the crowd and darted from the tavern.
Another witness said she thought the snake was rubber.
"Who would bring a snake to a bar?" asked Tricia Phillipes, 34. "That's crazy."
After the rattler slithered under a chair occupied by a disabled man, Hewit, who said he once owned a python and caught rattlesnakes as a child, grabbed one of the man's crutches.
Using the top of the crutch, he swept the snake out from under the chair, flipped the crutch around and, using the pointed end, pinned down the snake's head.
Hewit and another man wrapped a long-sleeved T-shirt around the snake's head, picked it up and dropped it in a bucket.
Mike Ceci, Phillipes' brother, took the snake home as a pet.
"He's actually nice, for a rattler," he said. "I just fed him a hamster, and I'm going to call him Jack."
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/archive/2004/06/17/snakethrow.DTL

 

[Evo]

"I just fed him a hamster, and I'm going to call him Jack."

That's horrible! Poor little hamster! I used to have pet hamsters.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I caught a baby rattlesnake here once and kept it for about a day, just to be able to see one up close. I kept it in a big jar. There were no rattlesnakes where I grew up and I was curious.

I had no intention of keeping it for the very reason you mention. I think the things they eat make much better pets than they do. I let it go back where I found it the next day.

Someone told me later that a baby rattlesnake is more dangerous than an adult. Adult rattlesnakes control the amount of venom they inject pretty carefully. They don't waste a kill-shot on larger things that they'e just trying to get off their back and don't plan to eat. Baby rattlesnakes, on the other hand, will inject all the poison they can on anything they bite.

This guy who told me this had been bitten by a baby rattler when he tried to pick it up by the tail. It turned around and scraped the back of his hand with one fang in an attempt to bite him. He dropped it and his hand went numb. He said that in about ten minutes the whole front of his body had gone numb. He had friends with him who called an ambulance.
He stayed in the hospital a day or two till it wore off.