By Joel Thurtell
I visited the University of Michigan’s Ruthven Natural History Museum today.
I’m always a bit wary in that place.
You’d be nervous, too, if you went back to the place where you’d been attacked by a rattlesnake.
So what if it happened 23 years ago?
Truth to tell, I brought the viper in there myself.
It was part of a stunt for a newspaper story about how easy it was to buy venomous snakes.
I wrote the story for the Detroit Free Press.
I described opening a crate removing three venomous snakes. But there was no ink for the story of what happened when the wily Western Diamondback shook loose from museum handlers and dropped to the concrete floor of the small museum room where we were putting the snakes into cages.
At one end of the room stood Free Press photographer Al Kamuda, snapping frame after frame. At the other end stood I, holding a broom ineffectually as the rattler, tail sounding like a buzz saw, moved in my direction.
I had no plan. The snake was moving faster than I could think.
I could hear Al snapping photos and chuckling.
Then, one of the museum guys caught the snake with a metal stick and flopped it into a cage.
Here, with permission of the Detroit Free Press, is the yarn I spun after escaping from the fangs of a Western Diamondback:
Headline: SNAKES ON SALE
FLORIDA COMPANY FLIES DEADLY GOODS TO CATALOG SHOPPERS
Edition: METRO FINAL
Publication: DETROIT FREE PRESS
Last PubDate: April 22, 1989
Section: NWS
Copyright: Copyright (c) 1989 Detroit Free Press
Byline: JOEL THURTELL, STAFF WRITER
Body Text: Big black handprinted letters on the box warned, LIVE POISONOUS SNAKES.
Inside the double-boxed crate lay two large rattlesnakes and a thin,
yellow-eyed Asian pit viper neatly coiled in cloth bags and waiting for
release.
A fast, tireless ratcheting sound, like a child’s windup toy that won’t run
down, gently vibrated the box’s plywood top.
With help from a University of Michigan herpetologist, a fat, 3-foot-long
Eastern Diamondback rattlesnake slid out of a sack and onto the concrete floor
of the University of Michigan’s Natural Science Museum.
The rattler flicked its black forked tongue. Its tail was a clattering
blur.
“Can you believe you just bought this with your Mastercard?” asked Dan
York, a PhD candidate in biology.
Last week, York helped the Free Press prove that anyone with a
telephone and a credit card can buy poisonous snakes, regardless of their
training or reason for possessing the deadly creatures.
The Free Press snake purchase — $105, plus $31.92 in air freight charges
— was made from a Florida dealer who advertises by direct mail and listed 51
poisonous species for sale in a July 1988 catalog.
The snakes arrived as freight on a Delta Air Lines passenger flight. In
Delta’s freight depot, a woman read the crate and quickly backed away,
gasping, “Oh, my goodness!”
The U.S. Postal Service forbids shipment of snakes or poisonous animals
through the mail, according to Don Rouse, a supervisor in the Dearborn Post
Office, so reptile dealers often ship by air freight.
Delta air freight worker Jerry Bigelow said, “Most of the people who
handle them here do not like to. If I didn’t have to handle them for my job, I
would not.”
From Metro Airport, the vipers — all three snakes fit that scientific
category — rode in a reporter’s hatchback to Ann Arbor. Earlier, York, 33,
placed one restriction on the experiment.
“I’m a coward herpetologist,” he explained. “I’m scared of snakes, so I
won’t work with cobras or mambas — they’re just too dangerous. . . .”
But the purchase could easily have included cobras and mambas. The dealer
lists a West African green mamba for sale at $275. The list also includes
Egyptian cobras at $65 each, monacle cobras at $40 and several other cobra
species, as well as bushmasters, kraits, gaboon vipers, puff adders and
Florida cottonmouths.
“Fun for the whole family,” the dealer’s catalog remarks about its 5-foot
West African spitting cobras, $55. Spitting cobras eject venom at their
victims’ eyes, and have caused blindness in some people who were not
immediately treated, according to Dr. Findlay Russell, who wrote the
textbook, “Snake Venom Poisoning.”
“I’ll tell you, I think this whole thing is horrible,” said Detroit Zoo
Director Steve Graham. “I don’t believe in exotic pets at all.”
Graham is convinced that most poisonous reptiles are bought for private
home collections. He favors a state ban on keeping any kind of wildlife as
pets.
But the dealer, Chris McQuade, said, “Where do you draw the line? Do you
give somebody a written examination or an oral examination to see if they have
the ability to adequately handle the animals? Putting a pit bull in the hands
of somebody who doesn’t know how to handle it is equally as dangerous.”
Graham said owners of exotic pets “want to draw attention to themselves. A
pretty green snake with blue stripes is one thing, but the real macho is to
have a poisonous snake.”
Graham admitted that occasionally the Detroit Zoo buys from the same
Florida dealer, but said zoos are minor players in the poisonous snake trade.
“The last time the federal government did figures on animals imported into
this country, they found that about 60 percent went to the pet trade,” he
said. “Thirty-five percent of the animals went to biomedical research, and
less than 1 percent went to zoos.”
Of the animals destined to be pets, “My guess is that the majority didn’t
live one year,” he said.
Not everyone who keeps poisonous snakes survives, either.
Russell, a physician at Tucson’s Arizona Health Science Center, said he
received 15-20 reports last year of bites from exotic snakes, including a San
Diego collector who died after his albino cobra bit him. And snakes can be
used as weapons, he said.
“I have testified on three cases in which people have attempted to commit
murder with snakes,” Russell said.
But the snake dealer countered, “Anybody who would try to commit a murder
with a venomous snake is kind of ridiculous.”
Contacted after the snakes arrived, McQuade said, “If you’re 21 and you
live in an area where the possession of the venomous animals is not
restricted or prohibited, there is nothing that would prevent us from selling
the animals to you.”
The Free Press order was filled by a salesman named Eric. While taking the
order, he didn’t ask how the snakes would be used, if the buyer knew how to
feed and care for them or whether proper snakebite medications were available
in area hospitals.
York, who is experienced in handling vipers, made sure that the appropriate
remedies were nearby.
Eric said his firm could supply a bamboo viper for $20. Also in stock was
an emerald pit viper, $75.
“They’re real, real docile, but they have a hell of a long strike range if
they decide to hit you,” Eric said.
The decision was made not to buy the emerald pit viper. The less-expensive
bamboo viper was selected.
Next, an order was placed for a rattlesnake that would look good in
photographs — a 3-foot Eastern Diamondback priced at $45.
Eric said he could offer a reduced rate — $30 — on a 4-foot Western
Diamondback rattler whose lighter brown and tan coloration would contrast
nicely with the Eastern’s black- brown-and-cream pattern.
It was agreed. Eric would throw in the Western Diamondback.
“Hey, just as a joke, tell your friend who’s going to handle these that you
bought an 8 1/2-foot black mamba,” Eric said. “You open the cage and they’ll
shoot out over your head, and it’s not like you live if they bite you.”
The black mamba “can strike so quickly that the victim may be unaware he
has been bitten,” Russell wrote in “Snake Venom Poisoning.”
A large black mamba can strike 5 or 6 feet and hit a human above the
waist, Russell said.
One study reported a 100 percent fatality rate from black mamba bites.
Eric said his firm sells black mambas for $300 to $500, but doesn’t often
trade in them because they are very rarely allowed out of their native African
countries.
CUTLINE
At the University of Michigan Natural History Museum, Daniel York, left, and
Greg Schneider, museum collections manager, open snake crate.
A close view of a 3-foot Eastern Diamondback rattlesnake, one of three
poisonous snakes the Free Press purchased from a Florida company. The firm
lists 51 poisonous snake species in a catalog. Photos by Al Kamuda.
Caption:
Category:
Keywords: SNAKE; SALE
Status:
