Episode: 1511
Title: HPR1511: How to skin a snake
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1511/hpr1511.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 04:30:56

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Hello HPR listeners, this is Jezra coming at you from somewhere.
Anyway, today I'm going to talk to you about how to skin a snake.
Now by no means am I an expert on the subject of skinning a snake.
As a matter of fact, I've only ever skinned one snake and it came out okay.
There were some issues, so I'm going to discuss how this all came about, what my problems
were and what I would have done to resolve those issues.
All of this came about earlier this year when someone said, hey Jez, I've got a snake,
can you skin it for me?
And I thought, I've got the internet, of course I can do this.
So I said, I've got the internet, of course I can do this for you.
And that's pretty much how it started.
So one day in early January, I went to my friend's work and she opened up the fridge at work,
actually she opened up the freezer.
She pulled out a three foot rattlesnake that was frozen and in a bag.
Now there's something you need to know.
Rattlesnakes are native to the Americas.
And aside from having a rattle, rattlesnakes also have fangs and they are fucking poisonous.
In fact, if a rattlesnake bites you, it can kill you.
Rattlesnake bites, however, are fairly fatal because they are usually treated in a prompt
manner.
Since I didn't feel like rushing myself to the hospital when I was getting the snake,
the first thing that I did was cut off its head and get rid of it.
Because those fangs are in the mouth and the mouth is on the head and I didn't want
to accidentally scrape my hand on the mouth and get poisoned and die because that would
have been a real fucking bummer.
Before I continue, let me stop.
Talk about the tools that I used while skinning the snake.
Basically there were three tools, well really two tools and a utility, tool-ish type thing.
Here we go.
A buck knife.
Any sharp, maybe not everyone needs one, but damn they're good to have around.
A utility knife.
And by utility knife, I mean sort of like a buck tool.
It's got pliers, it's got knives, can opener, bottle opener, scissors, and it was the scissors
that I really used.
And third and almost, not quite most important, but damn important and very useful, a pair
of latex gloves.
Why latex gloves, you ask?
Good question, because cleaning up your hands is so easy when you're wearing latex gloves.
Latex gloves are not just for doctors, dentists, and tattoo artists.
Picture if you will, working on a nice greasy car engine.
Now, when you're finished working on that greasy car engine, are you going to want to scrub
your hands with a pumice stone for five minutes to get them clean?
Or spend, oh I don't know, a tenth of a second pulling off a pair of rubber gloves.
Spend that tenth of a second pulling off the gloves.
Alright, now back to the snake.
After cutting off the rattlesnakes head, I then began cutting down the belly from where
the rattlesnakes chin would have been down to its anus.
Now what I should have done, and this would have been totally awesome, would be to take
an indelible marker of some sort, and just draw a line down the belly of the snake, ever
so fine in a nice straight line in the center so that when I was cutting using my scissors,
I could get a nice clean, even cut right down the middle.
That's totally what I should have done, and that is absolutely not what I did.
I just kind of like cutting, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, and that's about it.
And I wish I had a straighter line.
Snakes still came out nice, but it would have been better to have a nice straight line.
So next snake, that's what I'm doing.
Oh man, all this talk is making me thirsty, crack open, it's cold one here.
Awesome.
Now when you are cutting a snake's belly, actually when you were cutting any animals belly
for that matter, if you cut too deep, you are going to lacerate some of the organs on
the inside of the snake, or whatever animal it is you're cutting.
Those organs will include the intestines, those intestines will include certain bacteria
and other things you don't want to leave that animals intestines.
One, that's a good reason to have rubber gloves.
Two, it's a good reason to cut very shallow.
And three, if you're going to eat the animal that you're skinning, you do not want any
sort of fecal matter contaminating the flesh.
Contaminating the flesh.
Okay, back to the snake.
Snakes have a tail.
Once you cut from the chin down to the anus, anywhere from the anus down, technically
that's the tail.
And there's a little bit of difficulty cutting around the anus of the snake.
And so I just said anus, a whole bunch, and it just made me giggle when I was skinning
the snake.
And it made me laugh, and yeah, and much better time, anus.
Anyway, I continued cutting and once would continue cutting all the way down to the
rattle.
Some people will say, take the rattle off or cut off the rattle.
No way.
You want to leave that on the skin, because that's going to look hella sweet.
Once the snake has been cut lengthwise, slowly peel the skin off of the neck area.
Start peeling it back a little bit at a time, a little bit at a time, until you can get
a nice firm grip on both the skin with one hand, and what's the meaty body with the
other.
And once you've got that, you are golden, and you just pull those apart, and they just
kind of peel back like a sweet banana.
If you are planning on eating the rattle snake, or whatever snake you've got, and I highly
suggest that you do, now is the time to put down the skin that's in one hand, and pretty
much just scoop out all the guts and organs from the body, and set the body in a bowl of
water.
Just give it a little wash.
You can put in the freezer now and save it for later, but you're going to want to tenderize
it, and pineapple juice is probably a damn fine tenderizer for that.
Alright, take that rattle snake skin you got.
Sorry, snake skin, I don't know if you've got a rattle, or who knows what you've got.
Anyhow, you take that skin.
You rinse it.
It doesn't have to be super clean, just rinse it off.
Put it scale side down on a hard flat surface.
When I skinned my rattle snake, I used a wooden wine box, did a great job.
So you want to put it scale side down, fleshy skin side up, and then you need to do what
is referred to as fleshing.
And fleshing is simply taking a dull apparatus, or a sharp one, I used my buck knife, laying
the edge on the skin and moving outwards.
So what I would do is start with an area of skin, and I would put the knife blade on it
lightly, and scrape outwards.
Started the center, scrape out, started the center, scrape out, and what this is going
to do is remove any extra bits of skin, or muscle, or connective tissue that may be on
the skin.
So not necessarily removing the skin, but removing connective tissue, and extra muscle that
may have been there when you were ripping that maybe apart.
Alright, and that's going to take a long time.
I say it all right, way too much.
Now look down in the very tippity tip tip of that tail.
Is there a little piece of meat down in there, right by the rattle?
Because if there is, you want to get that out.
I found the best way to get that out is with a pair of needle nose pliers.
Well, I didn't really find that out because I didn't use needle nose pliers, but I had
a utility tool that had pliers on it, and that's what I used, and picked out as much of
the flesh as I could.
So in your hands now, you are going to have a snake skin that has been fleshed and has
no chunk of meat in the tail.
So far, so good.
Do you have an empty peanut butter jar sitting around with a lid that you can put back
on?
Do you have a mason jar with a lid that you can put on?
Something along those lines.
You grab that, stuff your snake skin in there, and pour in a mixture of equal parts rubbing
alcohol and glycerin.
Both the rubbing alcohol and the glycerin can be purchased at your local pharmacy, perhaps
a CVS, a big brand pharmacy around where I live, that's where I get my stuff.
Put the snake skin in the jar, put in the equal mixture of alcohol and glycerin, shake
it up, get a good mix, and for mine, I put a rock on top of the skin to hold the skin,
which is going to float down below the surface of the liquid.
And I let that sit for three days.
Why is this the best way to cure a reptile skin or a snake skin?
I have no idea.
But someone out there has a good idea, and that someone needs to contact me.
No, scratch that.
You need to tell me.
And when I say tell me, your options are either call me on the phone and tell me, or record
an HPR episode telling me why a mixture of alcohol and glycerin is good for curing
the skin of a snake.
Don't email me, don't text me, don't hit me up on status, friends, whatever maca, just
record an episode of HPR and force me to listen to it, something along those lines.
Awesome.
During the three days that the snake skin is sitting in the alcohol glycerin mixture,
I would pick up the jar and give it a shake, make sure everything is mixed up and everything
is getting soaked in and whatnot.
A couple of times a day, pick up the jar, give it a good shake, set it back down and let
it sit for a while.
After three days, open the jar.
I think it was at my mom's house and I just kind of poured it out in her garden.
Sorry mom.
Afterwards I took the snake skin and I stretched it out over a piece of cardboard and pinned
it down with some pins that I got at the fabric store.
Starting at one end, pull the skin tight, pin it down.
Pull the skin tight, pin it down.
Keep on going until you've finished with the entire snake skin.
Use as many pins as you can.
You want it tight, you want the whole thing nice and taut so that it dries, stretched
out over a large surface area.
Once it's pinned out, start brushing on extra glycerin onto the skin.
Oh, step back, put it scale side down when you are pinning it so that you are doing the,
I don't know, the skin side is where you are going to be brushing on the glycerin.
Brush that on, let it soak in, hour later brush on some more.
If it is dry to the touch in another hour, brush on some more.
Continue that until it is no longer soaking up any more glycerin.
Now, why is the glycerin helping out here and why was it used in the curing process?
Again, I don't know, tell me.
When the snake is pinned up and it's wet from the glycerin, put it in a cool yet dry
place so that it can dry slowly.
If it dries too fast, it could crack, things could go bad, just let it dry slowly, slowly.
After a couple of days, oh, I don't know, four or five, the snake skin should probably
be dry.
I mean, I want to pat it down with paper towel and slowly start pulling the pins out.
And basically, there you've got it, a nice, cured snake skin.
What are you going to do with it?
I don't know.
Turn it into a wallet.
You turn it into a headband.
You can turn it into a cozy for your awesome Nokia N900, one of the last decent devices
Nokia ever made, and it totally runs a new Linux operating system.
Boo-yah!
And then they had a burning platform.
What a shame.
Anyway, that's about it for me.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of HPR, and I will see you around the block.
Hopefully.
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