Dead rattlesnake sizzling on grill gave one last scare to Texas hunters, video shows
Killing time at a deer lease in Childress, Texas, turned into snake-killing time during a visit last fall, Rick Nolan, 64, told McClatchy in a phone interview.
Family friend John Washburn goes by “Big John,” Nolan said, and Big John was looking for a rattlesnake to add to the dinner feast of dove, which was in season at the time, and pork that he, Nolan and Nolan’s son Tim had decided upon after a long day of getting things ready for the upcoming deer season.
“Big John ain’t scared of the devil,” Rick Nolan told McClatchy.
So when Big John found a snake, he promptly killed it at close range with a big knife, skinned it, gutted it, and prepared it for the grill, Nolan said. The snake appeared to be at least four feet long, photos of the outing show.
“Them boys ain’t got good sense,” Nolan said of his son and friend.
For anyone wondering, rattlesnake tastes like “a sinewy, half-starved tilapia,” according to the New York Times, and that’s why it’s often referred to as “desert whitefish” by folks in the Southwest.
But when Tim Nolan, the chef in the group, placed the hefty coil of rattlesnake meat -- which still looked very much like a rattlesnake -- on the grill, it gave the guys one last scare.
It appears to uncoil, due to the heat, as soon as it touches the hot grill, the video shows. Rick Nolan posted the video to Facebook earlier this month, and since then, it has been viewed more than 2.5 million times, and shared more than 26,000 times.
“That’s fresh right there,” one of them says as Tim Nolan tries to get it back onto the grill.
A minute later, with the snake sprawled over the bottom grill surface, it appears to try to wriggle free of Tim Nolan’s tongs for a few seconds more in the heat, even though the snake had already been killed, skinned and gutted.
“Eventually he’s gonna die,” Rick Nolan says, before Big John answers, “Surely he’s dead by now.”
Tim Nolan, 39, told McClatchy that despite the all the seasoning they used in the video, the snake meat was pretty bland.
“It would fill a hole,” the Terrel, Texas, resident said. “But that’s about it.”
This story was originally published February 21, 2019 at 3:44 PM.
