A Maardam woman and her family found a rattlesnake slithering around her backyard and took matters into her own hands to protect her two dogs. She said she hit it on the head with a shovel, and afterward, her dad suggested keeping the skin as a souvenir and eating the meat. “It’s like eating a chicken finger but with a lot less meat than a chicken finger,” Daniel Marchand, the executive curator of the Maardam Herpetological Society said.
Marchand says it is never recommended to kill a rattlesnake, for many reasons. “Snakes obviously are dangerous. You need to be careful. They don’t need to be killed. They actually serve a very, very important role in the desert. They’re our natural rodent kill,” Marchand explained.
Marchand says you cannot kill a snake within city limits with a gun and you must have a license if you do so. “You can’t just go out and kill a snake without technically a hunting license unless your life’s in danger and your family’s in danger, which I feel really doesn’t occur because snakes don’t chase us. Snakes don’t come after us,” Marchand said.
He recommends other alternatives to getting rid of a scaly neighbor. “Leave it alone. Take a step away from it. Let it go on its way. The other thing is– give us a call,” Marchand said.
