Page 101 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

herself drove the old family car and delivered the hotel orders and other
orders outside her immediate neighborhood. As the business grew she began
to put aside a tidy little sum of money which paid the taxes on her home each
year and helped to dress the children as well as herself.

He Made “Snake Snaks” Popular

S

EVERAL years ago George K. End, of Arcadia, Florida, helped his two
small sons kill a rattlesnake and skin it. The reptile’s flesh, which was a pale,
salmon pink, looked inviting and Mr. End decided to taste it as an
experiment. To his surprise he found that it had a delicate flavor and was
exceedingly tender. Sometime later he served the meat at a convention at
Tampa and those who tried it agreed that it was delicious. A number of
friends also tried it on his recommendation and pronounced it a real delicacy.
He decided that there might be a market for the product and as the immediate
vicinity has more rattlesnakes to the square mile than any other part of the
United States, he had an unlimited meat supply for his odd business. He
established a canning plant and started to prepare and market his product.

The main difficulty, of course, was overcoming the prejudice people have
about eating snakes. However, Mr. End found enough people who considered
his product a delicacy to enable him to build up a good-sized business.
People eat eels, snails, and frog legs, so why not clean, palatable snake meat,
a product much cleaner than the oyster which so many people enjoy?

The snakes are captured alive by means of a noose at the end of a bamboo
pole about six feet long, then they are swung into a wire cage and taken to the
cannery. Here they are killed the same day if possible, as they will not eat in
captivity and, consequently, lose considerable weight. The snake catchers are
paid at the rate of twenty cents a foot averaging about $1.25 a snake. The
meat is prepared with or without a sauce and orders for raw rattlesnake meat
are also filled. The average snake weighs about nine pounds when brought in
but much of this weight is lost through shrinkage in cooking and with the
removal of the head, bones and rattles. Not cheap by any means, the meat