What happened to the man who made canned rattlesnake?
Lawrence Wilkinson
It was on this date in 1931 that the Floridian Products Corporation made its first sale of canned rattlesnake. The company’s founder and chief “wrangler” was George Kenneth End; a Columbia journalism graduate unable to find a job, he and his family moved to Arcadia, Florida (near Tampa) to make a living at farming. But as End put it, “the rattlesnakes were more prolific than the crops I planted.” First he tanned them; then he tasted them. Surprised to find them palatable, he wrote to the The Tampa Tribune about the delicacy — and received a stream of requests.
End made a business of supplying adventurous restaurateurs and gourmets until 1944, when he died of a rattlesnake bite.
