Reptile & Amphibian Forums

"Mack the carny owned the original Snake Farm in Laplace, La., which almost certainly had a brothel. Mack opened the Texas location in 1967 to attract HemisFair Park-goers in 1968, when San Antonio hosted the World's Fair. Mellyn describes Mack's Snake Farm as a roadside carnival with nothing but snakes, a chimp and a possible whorehouse."

"During Betsy a bunch of trees fell over fences, etc., allowing snakes out into the country side, which prompted the owners to go out and find them in the swamp". ******

This infamous reputation traveled from Laplace to New Braunfels. Whether the rumor is true, Mellyn doesn't know - or won't tell me. Mack sold the Texas Snake Farm to Joe Treska, a former employee, in the mid-1970s, and Mellyn bought it from Treska in 1994".

Snake farm today:::

http://www.txroadrunners.com/images/pics/TxHillCountryBats2005/SnakeFarm/SnakeFarmEntrance.jpg

http://www.txroadrunners.com/images/pics/TxHillCountryBats2005/SnakeFarm/SnakeFarmOutdoorZoo.jpg

***Note here*** There are many instances of Animal importers, exporters and dealers losing snakes to the wild. A few of them deliberately, some accidently. Florida has had it happen many times throughout history. You sometimes have to wonder what, if any, wild populations were affected by this.

I visited the one in Louisiana in 1969. If I remember correct it was a round building. I remember seeing a cage full of breeding speckled kings and some of the prettiest pink southern copperheads i had ever seen. I was on a trip to Texas specifically for copperheads and the owner telling me to hunt the railroad tracks in the area for some of the pink southern copperheads. While there...a couple of locales came in and we got to talking snakes and they had me follow them home, somewhere in the middle of the swamps...(don't have a clue were it is today) to hunt for lousisiana milk snakes. They showed me the secret to finding them...and like the scarlet king...discovered that they weren't so rare after all if you knew how to find them. That wasn't the smartest move on my part as I had my wife with me and no one would have ever found us in those backwoods. Never thought about it being a cover though for the other...hmmm...maybe I should not have had such a one track mind and left the wife at home!!! Just kidding!!

I was talking to a "snake guy" a couple of years ago and mentiioned that I had obtained my first indigo snake from Ross Allen. He asked "who's Ross Allen?" I thought everyone knew who Ross was!! Silly me. :>

One other antidote...before the Kankakee and "eastern bulls became such a hot item of today, Chuck Nadle of Baraboo Wisonsin had a small reptile institute and use to sell them in the early sixties. My cousin and I both bought them from him back then. what cool animals!!

See my post below about the Snake Farms.

TV