I was out in the deserts of Baja investigating a gold strike with an engineer friend and a clutch of burly Mexicans about twenty years ago, and one of the men disappeared into the rugged rock formations around us and came back a while later with a dead rattler about four feet long.

His technique was different. He had approached the snake and relying on his own quickness had grabbed it by the tail and swung it in an arc energetically so it could not bend back and bite. This method would produce a much more powerful trajectory if he had thrown the snake, compared to Rapaire's safer two-handed technique. In the actual event, he slammed its head against a boulder and brought it back for dinner. Tastes like chicken, like most of the world...