Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 April 1888 — Eating a Rattlesnake. [ARTICLE]

Eating a Rattlesnake.

Like most men who have followed the sea more or less for a living, I have had some queer experiences in eating; but if I live 100 years I will never forget a dish of rattlesnake I had a few years ago. I was in charge of a camp of tourists in South Florida, and one evening one of the party, a Brooklyn broker, who is something of an amateur naturalist, shot a rattlesnake with a rifle, the ball cutting off the reptile’s head as clean as though it had been a knife. Going up to it, he said: “I have heard that people on the plains eat rattlesnakes, and I’ll cook this fellow ‘and find out what he tastes like, if it is the last act of a desperate life.’’ He took the snake to the camp, skinned and cleaned it, and then cut it into slices, which he dredged in a nice batter and then fried to a turn. There were abjut fifteen in the party, and all but one of them partook of the snake. I ate j st enough of it to enable me to say that I had done so, but I 1 i end the meat very palatable and nicer tasting than eel cooked in the same manner. The broker and his son, a young man, made a hearty meal off the unusual food, and no unpleasant results followed. —New York Evening Sun,