Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Is the serpents den in PA still open?

http://readingeagle.com/blog.aspx?bid=17&id=18232&t=Serpents-Den-in-Lehighton-a-house-of-ho

Serpent's Den in Lehighton a house of horrors
A report in today's Allentown Morning Call, details the gruesome discovery at the Seprent's Den reptile store in downtown Lehighton this summer.

The stench from the Carbon County store overpowered animal control officers who entered on a tip from a neighbor that the store owner had not visited the store in three months and their were venomous snakes in insecure enclosures.

The snakes were not fed, given water or able to escape their own mounting feces. Except for one boa, which was found slithering through the store.

The July raid at this serpent hell discovered nine dead snakes and resulted in the seizure of: 108 pythons, 19 boa constrictors, 18 rattlesnakes, 6 cobras, 2 vipers, 3 king snakes, 2 milk snakes, 1 rat snake and 1 unidentified snake.

Yes, the store did have venomous snakes: the rattlers, cobras and vipers.

From John J. Moser's article: "The July 22 seizure at Serpent's Den, which operated at 114 S. First St., was the largest known reptile seizure in the state, said Jack Ardey, an animal cruelty officer with the state SPCA. It came to light Thursday because an animal rescuer petitioned Carbon County Court to take them off his hands."

The store owner, Steven Markevich, 44, of 83 E. Third St., Jim Thorpe, Carbon County, has been charged with reckless endangerment, maintaining a public nuisance, 17 counts of animal cruelty and 160 counts of violating the borough exotic pet ordinance.

He is currently on the run.

Here's a photo taken by Steve Markevich of a Gasperetti's Horned Viper that was submitted to venomousreptiles.org.

There are a number of his photos on this site as well.

Markevich's Web site has been abandoned and is now one of those annoying "search" sites.

A little Internet sleuthing turned up a Steve "snakehead" Markevich as a 1982 graduate of Kearny High School in Kearny, N.J.

Seems Steve, or someone else, logged into his Myspace page today and changed his description (sorry, like to the Yahoo cache won't work) from a 44-year-old male to a 20-year-old male and made his profile "private." Hmmm, wonder why?

If anybody is interested, I do have screen shots of his old MySpace page. Yep, the whole page. You gotta love cached Internet pages ...

He's been peddling snakes, turtles and lizards via the Internet for some years now and I wonder how his level of care has been over the years.

I hope they can track this guy down and throw the book at him as much as they can.

Even though snakes aren't cuddly and aren't my favorite, no animal deserves that type of abuse via three months of neglect.

Thanks to Al Walentis for the story tip.

This guy is bad for the hobbie. Years ago when he was starting out I saw him telling a guy the bite from a black necked spitting cobra was not that bad. He sold hots to under age kids. His animals looked sick and under fed. I hope they find him and put him in a cage and forget about him. I feel you should be able to keep what you want a long as you are an adult and can provide for the animal and saftey of others. This guy just did not care.