In the
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, following the opening road battle,
Max Rockatansky encounters upon the curious scene of a seemingly abandoned gyrocopter by the side of the road. Cautiously, Max approaches the primitive flying vehicle where he discovers a large snake, a pit viper of some sort, coiled around the engine. Presumably, the snake has been sunning itself and begins to hiss and lunge defensively at Max's approach. With lightning-quick reflexes, Max grabs the snake by the head but in that moment where he appraises his catch,
The Gyro Captain alights from his concealment within a shallow sand-filled pit, a
crossbow at the ready!
Later in the movie, after the circumstances of the movie have unfurled, Max and The Captain, whom Max has forcibly impressed as a pack mule to carry fuel, return to the scene to find that another mobile wanderer has found the copter-viper trap, and now lies dead having not been as cautious or quick enough to avoid the viper's fangs.
The snake, unfortunately has not survived the encounter. While Max rifles through the dead man's pockets, The Captain seizes up his former snake and defends it against Max's canine companion:
"I knew it! I knew it would work!
Lethal! Lethal these snakes. Born killers.
It's my snake! I trained it. I'm gonna eat it!
So find your own! Get out of it!
I've got a recipe for snake. Delicious.
Fricassee of reptile.
Better than your dog food!
Pure protein...minerals, vitamins. A man's gotta look after himself.
Healthy mind, healthy body, dog!" 1
The Captain was likely a person of some refined tastes before the fall of civilization. He enjoyed the finer things in life: desserts, the smell of bicycle seats and "clean" women in lingerie with perfume and nail polish who might enjoy French cuisine.
Snake meat would likely be well treated by fricasseeing, in which a protein is cooked slowly under low heat in fat or oil. Mirepoix would then be added and simmered down before adding flour to make a white roux sauce.
Certainly, the scarcity of cooking fuel would make the cooking method of such a meal an economical choice. Whether or not the clever captain had an onion, carrot, celery, lard or butter and even a pan stashed in his tattered overcoat, was unrevealed in the movie. Considering that a former gourmand who can pilot a crude flying vehicle and has survived in the wasteland by convincing vipers to lie in wait for unsuspecting victims, I wouldn't discount it.
It is also unclear as to what species the snake is. The shape of the head is definitely that of a viper. The snake is perhaps four feet long with regularly spaced, irregularly shaped blotched markings with dark boarders. A likely candidate would be the Desert Death Adder, which is common in Western Australia and has a habit of staying put when threatened. However the Death Adder has banded stripes, not blotches, so it is likely that the snake who played a Death Adder in the movie was served poorly by the makeup department. Consult your area Ophiologist. 2
In any case, the meal was not to be as the Captain ended up using the snake to great effect as a projectile, thrown from the air upon the gunman in an El Camino who, scared shitless, then shot his driver through the back of the seats with his pneumatic fired, four-barreled bolt cannon and crashed into a dry moat.
C'est la vie!
References:
[1] http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/m/mad-max-road-warrior-script.html
[2] http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-environment/2012/07/australias-10-most-dangerous-snakes