97lb rattlesnake ??

[fishshooter]

We were at OUR home when my wife was bit. I wonder if you will be so sentimental towards them if you ever have a loved one sent to the hospital by one? I doubt anyone here would allow a venomous snake to live were their young children play. It's a different story when it's your backyard.

 

[DRider]

I agree it's not cool to go out in the wilderness and just kill rattlers that aren't threatening you. But like fishshooter, I had one right in front of my house - so that's the only rattler I ever killed. Shot it with a high power pellet gun in the brain. It was just a little guy but there were way too many kids around to mess around with it.

Kinda creepy - after waiting an hour for any twitches to die down, I hung it up on a low branch of a tree where the kids could see so they could identify rattlers in the future - I was there with them the whole time and felt that this was a great chance to teach them. Except a yellow jacket ("meat bee") found it and let his buddies know. They swarmed, we left, and later there was just a bloody skin and skeleton on that damn tree and not much else.

I looked it up just now, rattlers will go 20lbs tops per the encyclopedias. I can envision a 30 pounder - but 90? No way.

 

[Midnight Scout]

I don't know about weight but that snake (including the location of the wound ) looks just like this one.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9_Bw-K3NquA/SWrBSOkVfqI/AAAAAAAAExg/O_QKuTKGUiE/s1600-h/Butch_&_Snake.jpg

This is the largest western diamondback on record and was killed in Arizona recently. This link is to a (linked) newspaper article and this story was carried on national news so I'm pretty sure it's real.

I still seriously doubt it was as heavy as 96 lbs even though this one was reported to be 8 ft 10 inches.

David

Sorry David, YOU BEEN HAD!

If you noticed, someone named "Euben Hadd" wrote the article. Whoever wrote it misspelled "gazette" (it should have only one "z" and not two) and there is no such paper as The Arizona Gazzette listed on Google. Plus, you are right, the snake in the article is the exact same snake the original poster has in his photograph.

It looks as though it has been "Phun with Photoshop" on the Internet again.