PETA Picked a Fight with the Apache Rattlesnake Festival

Long story short, the Apache Rattlesnake Festival is this weekend in Apache, Oklahoma, and PETA--People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals--has started a pretty sizable web campaign to end what is considered a regular practice that happens at rattlesnake roundups like this.

They demand that events like this should end the taking of photos with rattlesnakes... at least that's the over-simplified goal.

The real rub is how these rattlesnakes are prepared ahead of time in order to allow people to get up close and personal with them safely. Their mouths are sewn shut so they can't strike the person holding them.

Is it weird? For sure it's at least a little creepy the first time you see someone walking around with a live rattlesnake... but is it cruel?

The release that inspired an unprecedented amount of social media stalking and cyber-bullying from the animal rights group went out as follows:

Torturing snakes by sewing their mouths shut is both exceptionally deplorable and seemingly criminal. Please urge the festival’s organizers to prohibit any exhibitor who engages in this abusive conduct from participating in the 2023 event. The procedure—which is likely done without any painkillers—leaves the snakes mutilated and unable to take in life-sustaining nourishment for days on end.....

 

Exploiting them for photo ops and then killing them is a form of speciesism—a human-supremacist worldview—and has no place at a festival or anywhere else.

In response to the social media dominance of PETA, Facebook pages tied to the Apache Rattlesnake Festival have imploded. Where posts normally garnered maybe a dozen or so comments, now hundreds of people are contributing thousands of comments arguing both sides of this single issue.

The Rub.

While PETA is all about the humane treatment of animals, they're also pretty famous for killing animals... so those that have no problem sewing a rattlesnake's mouth shut defend their opinions from PETA on the perception that the animal rights group isn't all about living creatures.

It's a really wild thing to anonymously watch in the comments.

PETA's response to the 2023 Apache Rattlesnake Festival has been fervent, to say the least. Even when we announced the dates of this year's event months ago, our social media filled up with random people complaining about the sewing of mouths and such, as if we were the ones doing it. One lady named Susan even threatened a boycott of our radio stations.

Susan lives in California...

via GIPHY

The social media bullying campaign has been successful for the animal rights group though. The Apache Rattlesnake Festival has announced they won't be sewing snakes' mouths shut for photo ops this year.

However, visitors to this year's event will still be able to enjoy learning all about these nope-ropes in the huge snake pit.

While it may seem like an unwarranted spectacle to some, people that live in close proximity to these snakes learn invaluable knowledge. What they sound like, what to do if you encounter them in the wild, and the immediate process of first aid in the event someone gets bit.

The Apache Rattlesnake Festival organizers also milk the venom from these snakes which is used to further research in the medical labs of OU.

The snakes are humanely slaughtered at that point. The meat is cooked, the hides are sold, and tons of money is raised for the community and various programs of Apache... well, less money will be raised this year without the popular photo booth, but life always finds a way.

The festival starts Thursday, April 13th, and runs through the weekend in Apache. If you get the chance to go, have fun. As for me, I'm going to sit here and await the emails I usually get from PETA anytime I write about them or animals in Southwest Oklahoma.