Neither the original date of this article or the publication it appeared in are known although it obviously came from Associated Press and may have been published in the Kansas City Star. However, you have to wonder about some people and their reasons for buying snakes!

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -
To cook it, to breed it, to make a pet out of it, or to pit it in a fight against another rattlesnake, a chicken or a bear.

Those were some of the reasons people gave Benjamin Roberts in responding to Sunday’s classified ad he placed in the Kansas City Star reading “Rattlesnakes for sale.”

Roberts, 38 scoured the Glass Mountain range near Okeene, Okla., a week ago to search for the elusive Western Diamondback rattler. He said the trip netted seven snakes, ranging in size from 3 feet to 51/2 feet. The latter was sold for $35, the remainder for $10 each, Roberts said.

One snake, measuring 4 1/2 feet, was kept for the Roberts family to eat, he said.

“We did a poor job of cooking it,” Roberts said. “We conked him on the head, then put him in a pan and shoved him in the oven But the body popped out of the pan”

“I smelled something burning,’. Roberts recalled. “I looked in the oven and the body was wound around the shelves, and his tail was sticking in the pilot light.”

Roberts said his ad drew many callers, some serious, some questionable.

“One guy wanted snakes that would fight,” Roberts recalled.” He said he was tired of bingo and wanted to see a snake fight. I told him rattlesnakes don’t fight among themselves, and he asked if they would fight a chicken. I told him the chicken would fly away. Then he asked if it would fight a bear. He asked if I had a bear.”

Roberts said it was the first time he had caught any rattlesnakes; and he planned to return to Oklahoma next spring on another hunting trip.