Jo-Anne McArthur's Image

Pinned to a wall are the skins of two rattlesnakes. Surrounding each one are signed bloody handprints, triumphant marks of those who skinned a snake at the annual Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup in Texas. What Jo-Anne finds most unsettling about this image is that ‘so many of the bloodied handprints are those of children’.

Each year tens of thousands of rattlesnakes are captured for the festival, where they are decapitated and people can pay to skin them. Festival supporters claim it is important to control the population. But campaigners against roundups argue it is cruel and puts rattlesnakes’ long-term survival at risk.