This is "Little Guy." In 1997 I received a call from someone who said her son had captured a baby rattlesnake about 100 miles from Boise and had brought it back to her house. She had called the zoo and they said to call me. She said, "If you don't come get it, "i'm going to kill it." So I acquired "Little Guy," a Great Basin (Western) rattlesnake (Crotalus oreganus lutosis), who at the time was just a little bigger than a pencil, hence the name "Little Guy." Since he couldn't be returned to the wild I decided to use him in my university class and as he has grown over the years, he helps with the "Rattlensake and Outdoor Awareness" presentations.
I've posted this picture of "Little Guy" because I want you all to read an article on my web page from the Fort Worth, Texas Newspaper:
www.ecosnake.com. When you get there click on EcoSnake Insights and read about the gentleman in Texas who was arrested for selling vodka with rattlesnakes inside the bottles. Problem is no one seems to care about the rattlesnakes, rather, all they care about is enforcing the Texas statute applicable to the sale of alcohol.
All of these people are sick and what they are doing to wildlife is wrong. By the way, "Little Guy" and his kind have survived on our earth 20-30 million years - Maybe they know something we don't...Photo by Frank
Note on finding the article - after you click on
www.ecosnake.com and then on EcoSnake Insights, if you can't immediately scroll to the article, click on the "March, 2008" archives in the right hand column and then scroll down to "Texas rancher arrested for selling rattlesnake vodka." Thanks again, Frank
