SOUTH COUNTY SPOTLIGHT (Scappoose, Oregon) 13 May 08 Ssssuccess - St. Helens Woman eyes a lucrative future in breeding snakes (Tom Henderson)
Don’t look down upon the lowly snake. You might want to trade places with one — provided you could live in a cage in Misty Clark’s dining room in St. Helens.
It’s quite the life.
Sure, there’s the whole caged thing. However, your hostess warms you with a heat lamp and occasionally drops in a nice fresh rat or mouse. You don’t even have to kill it. Clark does your dirty work for you.
Chewy delicious rodents aren’t the only delights she deposits in your cage. She even drops in a friendly snake of the opposite sex for the express purpose of reptile romance. No “Match.com” for you.
“A happy snake just lies there,” says Clark. “It has its food and mate brought to it.”
How many humans outside of Hugh Hefner can boast such a pampered lifestyle?
Some of Clark’s snakes may well be destined for the Playboy mansion. You would have to be an eccentric person with a lot of money to buy one of them. Some of Clark’s snakes may eventually sell for up to $20,000 on the Internet.
She raises what she calls the “Mercedes Benz” of snakes out of her St. Helens home. These are snakes that come in a variety of colors. People into exotic snakes will pay big bucks for a pink snake, or even better, a pure white snake.
Clark has no plans to breed pure white snakes, but if she did, oh baby. You could buy a home for the price one of those snakes fetches online.
Even without white snakes, Clark’s snakes promise to bring in a lot of money once her business really starts slithering.
Many people are afraid of snakes. Clark isn’t one of them. She’s been around them for almost 30 years.
When she went to an exotic pet show in 1996 and won Boss, a snake worth thousands of dollars, she decided to get into the business of breeding high-end snakes.
Some of her neighbors on N. 14th Street were intimidated at first. They received notice from City Hall that one of their neighbors was applying for a permit to keep exotic pets. At least one person envisioned Clark keeping a tiger or gorilla.
Her fears were relieved when she discovered Clark was planning on raising harmless, non-venomous snakes.
Clark isn’t selling any snakes at the moment. Although she has 20-some snakes, they are still in the process of breeding. “Everything is in limbo right now,” she says.
As soon as the hatchings — or “neonates” — are ready for new homes, Clark will start selling them online. Eventually she wants to get into the wholesale snake business.
Clark will keep most of the snakes she has now for breeding. Besides, they’re her friends. “They’re all pets to me. I give them all names and hold them every day.”
Because of the snakes, the temperature inside her house is kept around 85 degrees. Aside from snakes, Clark also raises mice, rats and rabbits. They’re not pets, however. They’re food for the snakes.
Snakes often have a bad reputation, not just because of centuries of bad press, but because people have a nasty habit of discarding exotic pets. “A lot of people buy snakes, get bored with them and dump them,” says Clark.
That’s when neighbors start finding large snakes in their yards, and cats start mysteriously disappearing.
Snakes can live for 20 to 40 years, so people buying snakes as pets need to make a long-term commitment. Clark says St. Helens residents don’t have to worry about her snakes having a cat banquet. They will be shipped to customers outside the area.
And anyone who spends $20,000 on a snake is unlikely to just dump it in the neighbor’s yard.
Clark takes her snakes to schools on occasion and introduces them to children. Most of the neighbors have also met the reptiles. “They enjoy my snakes,” Clark says.
The feeling is mutual.
“They get used to humans and depend on us greatly,” she says.
One of her snakes, a dumeril boa from the southern tip of Madagascar named Mufasa, is losing his native habitat. Dumeril boas are highly sensitive animals. Any changes in their environment causes them to quit eating.
Mufasa is thriving, but only because he has Clark to take care of him.
She doesn’t mind. Breeding snakes is the perfect job, she says.
“I stay home and play with animals all day. I’ve done mill work and worked at grocery stores. I’ll choose this any day.”
St. Helens Woman eyes a lucrative future in breeding snakes