The flames destroyed around 4,000 square meters of the facility and killed a large number of snakes, iguanas, chameleons, lizards, amphibians, rabbits, rats, and insects.

Only eight turtles, between 60 and 100 kilograms, were saved, when rescuers poured water on their shells.

The Jaycees, short for the U.S. Junior Chamber, bills itself as a group that gives young people "the tools they need to build the bridges of success." The Sweetwater branch has been holding what it calls "The World's Largest Rattlesnake Round-Up" for 56 years on the first weekend in March, and the tool for success that it teaches young people is that it's fun to kill and torture animals.

For weeks or even months, rattlesnakes are stored in crowded barrels until it's roundup time. The snakes that have not suffocated under their kin arrive hungry, dehydrated, and sick from gasoline that was sprayed into their burrows to flush them out.

After a tour of the roundup, Michael Smith wrote an article for "Cross Timbers Herpetologist" in which he recalls noticing "...an unusual smell ... like bad cologne and also like something gone bad." Throughout the tour the smell keeps coming back to him, he writes, until he realizes what it is: "...the musk, feces, and blood of a thousand terrified snakes, half-covered with sprays of deodorant from Jaycees working the pits."

Bundy's beef with federal land management officials dates back to 1993, according to federal officials, when Bundy's allotment for grazing his cattle on public land was modified to include protections for the desert tortoise. Bundy, who told the Associated Press his family has been ranching this part of Nevada since the 1870s, did not accept the modified terms, and continued to let his cattle graze anyway.

After legal maneuverings on both sides, a Nevada district court judge in 2013 permanently enjoined Bundy's cattle (some 900, by the government's count) from grazing on public property. The judge reiterated that decision in 2013 and authorized the U.S. government to impound the cattle.

The first phase of that impoundment started Saturday, with 58 head of cattle being removed from BLM land, federal officials said in an online statement. As of Monday afternoon, that number had risen to 134, BLM spokeswoman Kirsten Cannon told ABC News. Removing the rest of the trespassing cattle should take another 21 to 30 days, she said.

Bundy disputes the federal government's authority to take such action. The Nevada Sheriff's Office, he contends, is the only entity empowered to impound his cattle. The Bundy Ranch website calls the federal agents "cattle thieves."

When a pest control company came last week to do a regular checkup on the bait boxes at the complex, the exterminator found snake skins nearby, took a picture, and reported it to the management office.

“The skin was still moist, indicating it was freshly shed,” Jennifer Bailey, an employee at the Harbor Pointe Apartments, told ABC News today.

To identify the snake, the office contacted a snake expert hours later who came in and said that the skin came from a Gaboon viper, an exotic snake not indigenous to the U.S. Another local herpetologist confirmed the identity through a photograph the pest control took, Bailey said.

The picture, submitted to a news station’s Facebook page in Austin, shows a rattlesnake coiled among bluebonnets.

The picture has many reconsidering their annual trip to take pictures in the bluebonnets, believing it may be too dangerous.

Some experts, however, are questioning the validity of the picture.

"It’s a real picture,” said Blaine Easton, a snake expert with the South Texas Herpetology Society. “I'm not sure that snake is alive. I think the snake is dead and mounted by a taxidermist."

According to Easton, it is the snake’s neck position that causes him to question the picture. Easton said it did raise a valid concern.

"I have found in the middle of bluebonnets, on some ranches, rattlesnakes sitting there,” said Easton.

After all, Texas is home to 113 species of snakes. The moral, according to experts, is to just be cautious.