Would you believe it happened in WHISKEY FLATS, Texas?

POSTED: 10:16 AM PST November 21, 2003

WHISKEY FLATS, Texas -- A man stuffed the tails of nine live rattlesnakes in his mouth, besting his record of eight.

"I have to break my own records. Heck, there's nobody else who can do it," said Jackie Bibby. "I think I could do 12 or 13, but probably no more. My mouth is only so big."

In a field behind his mobile home in Whiskey Flats, a community about 25 miles southwest of Fort Worth, Bibby banded nine snakes together by their rattles and wedged the tails into his mouth Tuesday. He leaned forward from the waist and held still for 10 seconds, the snakes dangling down.

For the record to be official, Bibby said, each snake has to be at least 26 or 27 inches long. Each weighs at least 1.5 pounds.

Bibby holds the world record for sitting in a bathtub with the most live snakes -- 75 Western Diamondbacks, according to Guinness World Records. He planned to break that record Tuesday by sitting in a tub with more than 81 snakes, but the snakes wouldn't cooperate and Bibby had to quit after only about 40 were dumped on him.

Bibby, 52, has performed snake stunts for television shows and other events. This time it was for the 50th anniversary of the Guinness World Records book, which is due out in September.

He said he's been bitten six times in 34 years of snake handling.