David Weathers loves rattlesnakes so much, he about kissed one on “America’s Got Talent.”
“Everybody wants to watch me die on that stage. It's horrible,” the snake handler from Hollywood told NBC 6 South Florida on Thursday.
He talked about his moment in the spotlight on Tuesday’s season premiere of the hit NBC show.
“I was just about to back up and let the air out of the balloon and then reblow it up for the heat to maybe trigger him to strike, and right as I started backing up he struck and popped the balloon out and I was like grrrrrrr,” said Weathers, who goes by the moniker “The Cobra Kid.”
Weathers is all about the reptiles. He runs Native Village, an exotic animal educational center across from the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino.
Weathers is surrounded by baby alligators, an adult gator, a rooster and a baboon. But his forte is snakes, the venomous kind, like the cottonmouth, the copperhead and the eastern diamondback rattlesnake. That's the one he almost kissed on “America's Got Talent.”
He doesn’t like big snakes so much.
“Them guys that go out, the ‘python hunters' and guys that handle big snakes,” he said, pausing to clap, “good for you because I'm not gonna do it.”
Weathers was the opening act on the season premiere – and his trick got the judges’ attention.
“David I want to say something and take this as a compliment – you are out of your mind,” Howie Mandel told him.
He made it through the first round, with an impressive performance. Las Vegas is his next stop.
“My opinion about it is you can't think about getting through the next one, it’s I got to get to the end, so that's what I got to plan for,” Weathers said.
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Photo Credit: NBC 6 South Florida