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BONITA DAILY NEWS (Bonita Springs, Florida) 08 September 07 Living with the wild - From snake bite to gator wrestling, a life of working with animals (Vivek Kemp)
Lime-colored vines shade the dark-maned lion lounging in David Weathers’ five-acre backyard. A baboon paces back-and-forth while black bears lay on their backs, sprawled out like cuddly plush toys.
As cute as they are from a distance, you have to remember these animals are nothing like the stuffed toys you nuzzled as a kid. Just last week, Weathers was reminded of that while cleaning the cage of a venomous Eastern diamondback rattlesnake.
The four-foot snake bit him on the hand, causing temporary paralysis and a trip to the ER, where he received life-saving anti-venom.
“It feels like a 100-pound bee just stung you,” the 30-year-old explains. One of the snake’s fangs went directly into a vein in his left arm, speeding the delivery of the toxic venom.
“I called my girlfriend and told her I might be going to the hospital, but I really didn’t think the snake injected me. At first,” he says, holding his left arm as though it were in a sling. Except for being slightly swollen and yellow, his arm now looks normal. The bite itself looks like a small pin prick. The second fang, which just glanced his skin, looks like a cat scratch.
“There’s no glory getting bit,” says the animal wrangler, animal-stunt coordinator and showman who performs at snake exhibits and on television. “There’s even less glory when you’re picking up poop.”
He’s not angry with the snake and is still comfortable handling it.
“Here, let me go get it,” he says, walking into the trailer where he sleeps with more than 100 snakes. He walks out with a forearm-thick diamondback that’s rattling like an angry toy.
He holds the snake just below the rattle, supporting the head with a long metal rod that has a hook at the end.
Sweat saturates his forehead. It drips down his pony-tailed brown hair as he walks into the 90-degree heat. He’s calm, breathing normally.
“Nothing scares me,” he says. “Well, spiders do. I can’t stand spiders.”
Weathers says the snake most likely bit him because he touched a sensitive part of its tail, which is peeling.
He puts the snake down into the grass. It coils and rattles. Then — snap! — it lunges at him.
Weathers stays put. He knows he’s out of strike range.
“They run on instinct, not malice.”
He explains that when he got bit “I had my guard down because I was at home in a comfortable setting. That was a mistake.”
Since childhood, this Punta Gorda resident has cultivated a reputation for being a maverick, a daredevil — like when he kisses cobras or wrestles wild alligators. Such extreme behavior has become second nature for the Florida native.
Weathers got his start in the animal entertainment business at age 8, as a volunteer at Native Village, a tourist attraction in Hollywood, Fla. The park spotlighted Seminole Indian traditions and native-Florida wildlife. While there, he was groomed in the old-Florida tradition of alligator wrestling and snake handling.
By 14, he was toe-to-tail with the reptiles both in shows and in the wild. Putting his head between a gator’s massive jaws. Kissing powerful green snouts. Diving into the water and pulling out the ancient beasts.
“I loved it,” he says. “I was making some money and having fun. Even when we weren’t performing, my friends and I would go out to the canals and capture gators or snake hunt.”
Over the years, the roadside craze of gator wrestling died. The issue of animal rights has gained more mainstream traction.
Which hasn’t stopped Weathers. He has graduated from tourist traps to the spotlight of TV and movies.
His stunts and his animals have appeared on shows ranging from the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno” to “Jackass Number Two” and “Wildboyz.” For the “Girls Gone Wild” DVD series, which occasionally films at Weather’s house, the animal trainer taught his pet baboon, Congo, to lift up girls shirts.
He has, in many ways, become animal wrangler to the MTV generation.
“People call me the Evel Knievel of the animal world,” Weathers says with a laugh. “It’s an adrenaline rush.”
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That reputation, along with news of the diamondback bite, has fueled a debate in the national snake handling community about the validity of Weathers’ showmanship.
“I suspect the real beef many people here have with you (myself included) is the machismo, circus act mentality that you put forth when performing with these animals,” reads a posting on a popular online discussion forum for snake enthusiasts called kingsnake.com.
“There’s a lot of tension between people who keep reptiles as a hobby and those who work in entertainment,” says Bobby Neal, a graduate student studying herpetology at Arkansas State University. Neal also posted comments on the message board.
“There are some people who argue that he’s bad for the hobby,” he says. “David’s been able to make money doing shows, but those techniques he uses give a bad example to people who don’t know he’s handling them for show.
“In his defense,” Neal continues, “I have nothing personal against David. If he’s able to do what he does and stay alive then he’s doing something right.”
For Weathers, the debate has been hurtful.
“These people have no idea who I am or how I treat my animals,” Weathers says. “Look, I’ve been bitten by two snakes in my 20 years of working with snakes. If I was handling them wrong I’d be dead by now.”
He continues. “I spend more on my food bill for my snakes than I do for myself, like $100 a week. Yes, I make a living off my animals, but I don’t mistreat them. I love my animals.”
The main issue for Weathers is that people confuse how he tends to his animals in daily life with the heightened drama of his performances.
“People have to understand that I am extremely safe. I have an understanding of animal capabilities that others don’t,” he says. “I have an ability to read the animals. I know when I’m going too far, when I’m pushing them too far.”
Weathers has Class I, II, III permits and a venomous snake permit. The permits, which are administered by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, are the same issued to zoos and circuses. They allow him to keep animals ranging from possums to Bengal tigers.
People must demonstrate extensive knowledge in the keeping and husbandry of animals, says Capt. John West, an investigator at the commission who has known Weathers for 15 years.
Weathers has to pay yearly fees and have his property inspected twice a year, says West, 58.
“I’ve known David for a long time. He’s a respected handler and keeper,” says the investigator of 29 years. “I’ve never heard of a complaint regarding how he keeps or treats his animals.”
The cages for the large mammals — most roughly 24-by-10-by-8-feet, which is the standard set by the state wildlife commission — are less than 100 feet from Weathers’ beat-up trailer.
He spends most mornings and evenings out here by himself, cleaning poop, filling the bears’ cement pool with fresh water and throwing raw meat to the big cats. (Many of the animals were donated to him by other owners, and some were caught by animal control operations throughout the country.)
“There’s no set schedule,” he says. “When I get up, I come out here and take care of them.”
He pets his lion, Micco, through a chain-link fence. The cat gives off a low rumble. Weathers purses his lips and leans forward.
“What? What is it, Micco?” he says. “By far he’s the friendliest animal I have.”
Micco’s one of the hungriest as well. On average his big cats, including the two cougars, get 30 pounds of meat per week. The two black bears eat about 20 pounds. Weathers buys it at the grocery store.
He’s currently in the stages of building larger enclosures for his animals. He’d like to make the enclosures larger, enough so they could roam in more of a natural habitat.
“It’s a full-time job, caring for them,” he says.
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Over the years, Weathers’ skin has been punctured by alligators, a bear and a cougar. Canals of scars run atop his skin — like tattoos from the wild. He admits keeping these animals has risks. “The sad thing is that when something like a bite happens, people say, ‘You shouldn’t keep these animals.’ They don’t see that I’m educating while I’m entertaining,” Weathers says.
Perhaps Weathers cult celebrity has blurred the distinction between his private life with his “pets” and his public displays of man vs. beast. But it’s that same celebrity — that drive to perform — that has been a fundamental part of Weathers’ life since childhood.
“He was just a wild young man who was fascinated by animals,” says Paul Simmons, the man who taught Weathers how to wrestle alligators at Native Village.
“Back in the early ‘90s, I was the premier alligator wrestler,” says Simmons, 40. “In the evenings and mornings, I would go around and make sure the animals were where they were supposed to be. One morning I saw this little hand coming over the fence. There was little David sneaking in.”
It wasn’t the first time. Simmons had been noticing signs that someone had been lurking about — latches open, things misplaced. “I grabbed him and instead of calling the cops we struck up a thing where he could come and learn about the animals, without getting chewed up,” he says, adding that the owner of the park, James Billie, agreed to the arrangement.
Over the next couple of years, Weathers tailed his new mentors, Simmons and Billie, feeding animals and learning how to be safe around dangerous wildlife.
“I never had a problem with it,” says Kevin Weathers, Weather’s father, who worked as a computer technician.
“David was always interested in snakes and stuff. When he was at the Native Village, they gave him the access and the lessons he need to do it safely.”
He’d seen his mentors enter the alligator pit. He’d seen them grab the beasts with bare hands. He’d seen them in action and he wanted in.
“When I started teaching him how to wrestle the animals, I didn’t let him just jump in,” says Simmons, who lives now in Tampa. “I was a hard teacher back then. He had to feed the animals for a couple of years. Then he had to just watch me wrestle for another three years — before I even let him touch a gator.”
The idea was to see if Weathers would get bored and move onto another interest, he says. Simmons himself started wrestling at 10.
“He stuck with the program,” says 63-year-old Billie, a Seminole chief from 1979-2001. “David was kind of a guy that really loved animals. He had a Tarzan mentality as a kid. He still does.
“I’ll tell ya’ this, he likes animals more than he likes humans.”
Once Weathers started working as a wrestler, his veteran peers noticed the 14-year-old’s natural talent.
“I don’t think being a showman can be taught,” Simmons says. “David was inspired by his inner spirit. Somehow God gave him an act. He puts on a darn good show. It’s something in his soul.”
The main purpose of the shows, Simmons says, was to educate the public about the animals and about the history of alligator wrestling.
“Wrestling started in the cracker era of Florida, around the turn of the century,” Simmons explains.
Back then, non-native Americans were fascinated and frightened by the giant reptiles, Simmons says. The Seminoles were still bartering, hunting and using the hides of the alligators.
When people had a problem gator nearby, the Seminoles were the ones who would take care of it, Simmons explains. Eventually the occasional gator removal became an organized man vs. alligator performance.
“The Seminoles would do it because, at that time, it was hard for them to get any other good-paying job,” he says. “Our technique has been perfected over 100 years. It does not hurt the animals. They certainly don’t like it, but they don’t get hurt.
“The only reason we do shows now is to educate people on how to co-exist.”
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Halo, Weather’s pet raccoon, scales the male cougar’s cage. The blond-coated cat hits the chain link, trying to claw the masked assailant.
“Cujo, get down,” Weathers scolds the cat.
The thick-muscled cougar almost looks like a house cat stalking a bug through a screen window. Eyes fixated on the scampering raccoon, fascinated.
“He’ll be occupied for the rest of the day,” the trainer says, walking over to the cage. Just moments before, Weathers was petting the purring cat through the fence.
“The only way to really know these animals is to interact with them,” he says. “National Geographic specials get you close to them through telescopic lenses. When you see my animals on TV, they are right in front of the camera.”
He knows shows like “Jackass” and “Wildboyz” — which show people purposely getting bit by baby alligators, swimming with sharks and riding ostriches — seem exploitative.
What pushes the edge also grabs attention, he says. And for young people who already tend to be apathetic, getting them to watch shows about animals is a positive thing. “Anyone who can see a bear on TV and say it’s beautiful, and then see a bear in the wild and think it’s an awful, dangerous beast, don’t get it,” he says. “They are dangerous, but they’re not awful.”
Like Steve Irwin, Jeff Corwin and even Jacques Cousteau, this alligator wrestler-cum-wrangler constantly returns to one central message.
“Animal attacks happen,” he says. “It’s not the animal’s fault. People are putting themselves in the animal’s territory.”
“You know all this ‘Save the Florida Panther’ stuff? They’re not going to save the panther unless they stop building and taking away their environment. In the end, people are giving all these animals a life sentence behind bars.”
Cujo lies nearby in his cage. His neck still craned, still watching the soccer-ball-sized raccoon on top of his cage.
http://www.bonitanews.com/news/2007/sep/08/snake_bite_gator_wrestling_life_working_animals/?around_swfla
as venomous keepers/professionals/hobbyists tend to be pretty opinionated, knee-jerk reactive folks who oftentimes need to take a step back from an initial argument and look at things slightly outside the box. When I look at what's ruining the hobby or the private sector's right to own venomous or exotic animals in general, there are many factors contributing to the demise of our hobby. Heck, a very scary incident just took place at a well known herp show which many of you will soon hear about. I don't think what David is doing puts even a small dent in where the real problems are and may perhaps, be helping the cause of protecting our rights (I haven't give that a lot of thought). While I am not going to address those here, I am happy to discuss them off line.
