Quote:
Originally Posted by Apache
They used to have large snake roundups in Georgia too. Some were near me and the main focus was collecting the venom to use for medical purposes. Also noodling used to be quite prevalent in Georgia only the people I knew called it tickling. My father used to do it when he was a teenager, until the day he thought he was tickling a bass and threw a large water Moccasin up on the bank. That was the last time he did it. 
Apache |
No wonder the price of anti-venom is so high.
There is a boy near here who was playing with some friends in the woods and, while running, he passed by a rattlesnake, which popped him. The anti-venom, alone, to save the boy, was around $140,000. However, perhaps because of his age, and therefore size, it took something like 50 vials to save him.
If you don't mind doing the job, you could probably make a lot of $$$$$ capturing rattlesnakes. But, it looks like there would be a way to raise them on a rattlesnake farm kind of thing, and minimize risk to the handlers. It would also drive down the cost of the anti-venom.
I saw on the news a year or two ago that there is a big operation in a little town close to here, where I suppose that all that they do is keep snakes of many, many different varieties and sell the venom from each one of them to anti-venom manufacturers. Interesting little town. It's also got a business that comes in after violent crimes (think: lots of blood and guts) and cleans it all up. I never knew how that got taken care of until then.