Go ahead, so maybe this isn’t exactly what my mother envisioned her daughter doing when she grew up, but, oh well, this past Saturday was interesting…
Out here, you never really know what you’re going to come across — even on a routine trip to our favorite fishing pond, and last weekend’s surprise was a road kill rattlesnake. OK, so maybe most people would give it a look and go on, but it was so beautiful, I just had try my luck at trying to salvage its skin. (Two things: first, I don’t kill the rattlesnakes around here because there aren’t that many in our neck of the woods and they don’t want to see me any more than I want to see them. Second: er, the video at the end isn’t for the weak of heart….in fact, it’s a little gnarly — so if you’re squeamish, DON’T watch the video…).
With that said, if you are interested, I was amazed at how easy it was to skin and dry a rattlesnake skin. Here’s how:
I’ve put the perfectly viewable pictures at the top of this post, (If you’re interested in the gnarly video, it’s at the bottom of this post –)
First, to skin the snake, all you have to do is
1. WEAR GLOVES
2. remove the head
3. Take a normal pair of scissors, and starting at the base of the “neck” of the snake, cut (shallow cut – because you don’t want to cut into any of the gnarly insides) the underbelly from top to bottom (head to toe?) the length of the snake.
4. Then all you have to do is start pulling the skin from the top down. It will easily pull straight off the snake all the way down to the base of the tail.
5. When you get to the very bottom, just cut the tail off of the body, leaving the tail attached to the skin.
6. Now you have a skin to dry.
Here’s what I did to process the skin once it was off the snake:
1. First, find a piece of plywood or board to attach the skin.
Then it’s simple:
2. Using a staple gun, just staple the skin to the board (stretched out with the INSIDE of the skin facing out). (I made the mistake of putting the inside of the skin to the board and had to remove all the staples and do it over.)
It’s a little bit of effort, but really, not much, I promise. Peat the pup was riveted as you can see.
24 hours later, there was a perfectly dried snakeskin! No salt, no peroxide, nothing but air. It’s my understanding that salt will overly-dry the skin and make it brittle, so don’t use drying agents. Air does the job – and since the skin is so thin, it literally dries overnight.
OK, so do you want to see the video? This is called stupid fun and it’s why my kids regularly tell me to grow up. Oh well.
Here’s what I saw…
Rattlesnake Saturday from Alligator Hall on Vimeo.
OK, so there you go! Now it’s on to a road kill wallet, or tie, or belt, or…we’ll see!