Elisabeth Dyer, Tampa Bay Times In Print:
Friday, May 16, 2008
At Spotos Steak Joint in Dunedin, owner Jimmy Stewart smokes rattlesnakes whole and then slices and chargrills them. The texture? Like chicken.
A live 6-footer fetched a $1.00 and young men found that lucrative in 1940. It had to be; too much risk to catch rattlesnakes for sport.
The Eastern diamondback Rattlesnake, also known as CRotalus Adamanteus), is the largest and most dangerous venomous snake in the United States.
Pretty tasty, too.
According to a man named George End, that is.
In 1939, the failed farmer with a get-rich dream put the South Tampa area on the map:
Rattlesnake, Fla.
He set up a snake pit at the corner of Gandy Blvd and Bridge St.
A cannery and post office soon followed.
and shipped canned rattlesnake in "supreme sauce" and snake snacks around the globe.
Perhaps the easiest way to envision an acre is as a rectangle measuring 88 yards by 55 yards.
The length of a Football Field (American) "The game is played on a field 100 yards long and 53.3 yards wide."
Back then, diamondbacks lived roughly one per 20 acres in these parts, said Bruce Means, author of Diamonds in the Rough and considered the world authority on Eastern diamondbacks. In some areas, rattlers were as dense as one per acre.
Today, they may be extinct in South Tampa, he said.
"Too many people altering the native habitat, the agriculture," Means said.
"I call it homoculture: growing people."
And maybe too many rattlesnake dinners.
Most people don't remember the community where rattlesnake emerged as a delicacy, but the reptile still has a place at suppertime, especially in Texas and Colorado, as well as a steak joint not far from here.
Epicurean experience
Half a century ago the diamondback was fine dining. A 5-ounce tin went for $1.25, steep back then.
Today, at Spotos Steak Joint in Dunedin, appetizers go for $10.
"It tastes like a cross between chicken and veal," said Spotos owner Jimmy Stewart.
He had heard the history of End's cannery, but Stewart figures he has the only rattlesnake game in the area today.
He buys diamondbacks from a farm in Colorado, then hickory smokes them, minus the deadly fangs. He slices, chargrills and serves them on a pile of tobacco onions glazed with a Pan-Asian barbecue sauce.
"I've got quite an itch for wild game," Stewart says. He also serves up Burmese python, crocodile and kangaroo with a light chocolate sauce.
Outside of rattlesnake festivals and Texas, where the dish is common, Boy Scouts sample the meat during survival lessons.
Joe Tripp took a 5-foot rattlesnake on a trip with his son and Lutz Cub Scout Pack 212 last fall. He got the snake from a friend.
"We ate it caveman style draped it over a stick over a campfire," said Tripp, who lives in North Tampa.
"It tasted like chicken, but much sweeter but not worth the effort." A rare sight now
In the 1930s, diamondbacks were plentiful in the palmettos, scrub and pine that blanketed Tampa's southern peninsula and were especially dense in MacDill Field, as it was known then. Not anymore.
David Lueck, also known as the Trapper Guy, who catches snakes and other wildlife in the Tampa Bay area, comes across only one or two Eastern diamondbacks a year.
He gets calls from around MacDill Air Force Base and from North Tampa, he said. Often the snakes are other kinds of rattlers, smaller and less dangerous than the diamondback.
Means, the diamondback expert who was twice bitten by a rattler, says the snake has the ability to regulate the amount of venom it injects. A small amount kills a mouse. When surprised, the amount of venom can be great.
"If you have a severe bite you just can't keep enough antivenom on hand," he said.
The Town of Rattlesnake no longer exists, but people still refer to land East of Bridge St. on the South side of Gandy Blvd, as Rattlesnake Point.
John Kearny, 68, worked at an office building near there, and remembers driving over the Gandy Bridge decades ago and seeing the snake pit. But he hasn't seen a rattler on Rattlesnake Point since the 1980s.
Ample opportunity for George End.
Originally the Family came from Holland and settled in Sheboygan Wisconsin, George graduated from Columbia University with a journalism degree, but was unable to find a job.
He moved to Tampa in 1937 from Arcadia Fl, where he had tried to eke out a living farming, according to historical accounts, with his wife, Ginnie, and two sons, Daan (Don) and Richard,
"The rattlesnakes were more prolific than the crops I planted," he told the Tampa Tribune in the early 1940s.
"We killed a lot of them and sometimes tanned the skins. Often I wondered how the meat would taste."
Turns out it was palatable, and George tasted opportunity. He wrote a letter to Time magazine raving about the delicate flavor. A stream of requests came in.
He moved into an abandoned two-story gas station and converted it into a cannery and post office on Gandy Boulevard when it was a two-lane road outside the city limits, from the one you see below
Tourists drove out to East side of Gandy Bridge from Hillsborough, and Pinellas county stopping just East of Bridge Street, and lined up the family for a photo shoot at Rattlesnake Cannery and Reptilarium.
Georges first location in Arcadia Fla.
The Lettering on both cars read
The Elks Magazine
Chevrolet
Good Will Tour
Miami Fla -------Columbus Ga
U.S. National Convention 1935
Canned frog legs and purses, slippers and jackets fashioned from rattler skins were sold there, alongside antivenom.
George cooked the rattlers in a pressure cooker or smoked them, then shipped them World wide.
Joe Bollent had been stationed at MacDill Field in 1940 as a new recruit and remembers going to see George's exhibit in a grass shack.
George whipped a lid from a big woven basket on a table.
"There was a stuffed rattlesnake, ready to strike," said Bollent, who is now 89 and lives in Bayshore Beautiful.
George K End, the venerable Mayor of Rattlesnake, met his end in 1944.
His son Richard witnessed this incident
One day, George was showing off an old rattler that always had been docile. This time, however, the snake bit George on the hand. He refused to go to the hospital, electing to treat the wound with an out of date antivenom he kept on hand. The cure wasn’t working, and was rushed to Tampa General Hospital, where he died a few hour later.
In 1955, the new post office now incorporated into the city of Tampa, was moved and renamed Interbay.
Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report.
Elisabeth Dyer can be reached at
edyer@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3321.
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