I've got back into the pres archives to 1994, and I have not been able to nail down any specific incident involving Mambas and 11 people at a time. However, I did pull a series of items where people discuss the maximum maiming that masticating mambas may make. (Sorry about that). Of possible related interest, I was asked the same sort of question a couple of weeks ago by a PETA-wanna-be hoping to bring in more restrictive by-laws in the Utah state ...
Cheers
Wes
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I took the liberty of UPPER CASE print for the specific line about potential fatalities to make scrolling quicker.
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DENVER POST (Colorado) 08 May 04 Illegal snake sale nets plea - Man, friend kept venomous reptiles (Mike McPhee)
A Firestone man pleaded guilty Friday to federal charges of selling illegal venomous snakes, as well as being a felon in possession of weapons.
Brook Berntson, 37, will be sentenced in August to up to five years for violating the federal Lacy Act, which prohibits possession of certain wildlife such as poisonous snakes, and 10 years for the weapons.
Berntson and his friend, Cindy Sue Jahn, 46, had 98 snakes, most of them venomous, when federal agents raided their home in the Weld County town. The reptiles included rattlesnakes and other pit vipers, cobras AND A JAMESON'S MAMBA, WHICH CARRIES ENOUGH VENOM TO KILL 15 PEOPLE, OFFICERS SAID.
U.S. Wildlife officers came across a snake ad of Berntson's on the Internet site www.kingsnake.com They arranged a buy, secured a search warrant and raided Berntson's house last summer. Berntson said he made his living trading snakes and that he had just sold three Colorado Western hognose snakes to a Florida man for $25,000.
Officers found three rifles in the house, which were illegal for Berntson to possess because he was convicted of a felony, criminal impersonation, in Jefferson County in 1998.
The Denver Zoo assisted wildlife officers in removing the snakes. They were taken to the Denver Zoo and some later were transferred to the Reptile Gardens near Rapid City, S.D., which claims to have the largest exotic snake collection in the world.
Berntson's companion, Jahn, was also charged with violation of the federal Lacy Act.
http://www.denverpost.com/framework/0,1413,36~53~2135186,00.html
DAILY RECORD (Glasgow, Scotland) 05 April 03 Stat's Life
World's top ten deadliest snakes and potential deaths per bite
1 Black Mamba 266
2 Taipan (above) 260
3 Russell's viper 200
4 Inland taipan 157
5 Green mamba 71
6 Jararacussa 60
7 Egyptian cobra 46
8 Forest cobra 43
9 Indian cobra 41
10 Yellow jawed tommygoff 40
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/news/page.cfm?objectid=12812040&method=full&siteid=89488
CINNCINATTI ENQUIRER (Ohio) 07 July 01 & EVANSVILLE COURIER & PRESS (Kentucky) 08 July 01 Poisonous snakes popular, legal to keep in Kentucky
Slade, Kentucky.(AP): Some people who want fearsome pets are passing on pit bulls, opting instead for pit vipers and other deadly snakes that are readily available on the Internet.
A snake expert from eastern Kentucky is finding that the buyers often get more than they bargained for.
Jim Harrison chuckles when he tells about the man who ordered a 10-foot black mamba, which later got loose in his apartment. Harrison captured the venomous creature for the man.
Such calls are coming more often as people purchase deadly snakes through unregulated sales, Harrison says.
Harrison, who operates the Kentucky Reptile Zoo at Slade, warns that people may be flirting with death when they order the exotic snakes.
“ONE DROP OF VENOM FROM THE BLACK MAMBA COULD KILL PROBABLY 200 PEOPLE,” HARRISON SAID. “THEY ARE THE MOST NOTORIOUS AND DANGEROUS SNAKES IN THE WORLD.”
Because Kentucky doesn't regulate ownership of venomous snakes, no estimates exist on their numbers. Some Kentucky counties, including Jefferson County, have local laws that restrict ownership, but most do not.
Sgt. Ann Camp, an animal control officer in Jefferson County, said she receives few complaints about captive snakes.
“That's not to say we don't have them here,” she said. “We can't go out and check every house.”
About 10 percent of the snakes at the reptile zoo in Slade came from homes where they wore out their welcomes. At prices ranging from $35 for a baby copperhead to $500 for a mature mamba, sales of poisonous snakes are proliferating on the Internet. Going price for a cobra is about $150.
“Owning these snakes becomes almost like ego gratification for some people,” Harrison said. “The easy availability of an animal doesn't mean it's a good thing to have.”
Fascination with snakes draws about 50,000 people a year to the reptile zoo, which houses about 1,000 snakes from around the world, from giant pythons to pygmy rattlers. The zoo is one of few in the world that displays all four varieties of the mamba.
William Bird, a herpetologist at the Louisville Zoo, said television shows have added to the growing interest in snakes. Bird said interest in snakes and other reptiles skyrocketed after the “Crocodile Hunter” show began airing on the Discovery Channel.
Children often ask Bird why he doesn't handle snakes like the people on TV do.
“Television has basically turned these animals into toys,” Harrison said. “People think they can go out and pick them up and play with them.”
Bird said Harrison, who has been bitten 14 times, knows what he's talking about when he warns people against buying venomous snakes to keep at home. Two of his snake bites were from cobras that nearly killed him despite quick injections of anti-venom.
“He knows what he's doing, and he's still bitten,” Bird said. “If you handle these animals, you will be bitten. That's just the way it is.”
http://enquirer.com/editions/2001/07/07/loc_deadly_vipers.html or http://www.courierpress.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?200107/08 poison070801_news.html 20010708
ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER (California) 22 July 01 PSSSSSST. Over here ... Heeding the call of the unexpected (Steve Plesa)
“Learn to recognize them quickly and leave them alone.” - The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Reptiles and Amphibians, on venomous snakes
“The snakes have just been fed.”
There was something about the way she said it. Softly, but with a hint of tease, a lure.
I turned and looked at her. She had a little smile on her face. And, being that we were in a snake museum it seemed she might have been giving me a ... come-slither look.
It was one of those let's-duck-down-this-alley moments, and I knew my 10-year-old son and I HAD to go in and see the just-fed snakes. These moments occur when you're traveling, and you end up doing something you really didn't intend to do, and get a huge surprise.
The Snake Museum was in a little cobbled-together mall in the trinkets and tourists square in downtown Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. We were due to meet friends for dinner at 6, and the restaurant was a bit of a hike away. It was 5:30. I said, “Let's just take a peek in here,” and we discovered that the admission price was $8 apiece. The steep price, combined with the fact that we had an appointment, caused me to turn to leave.
That's when she mentioned the feeding.
I paid and she showed us the way.
The rusty metal door opened and we heard cheeping. All kinds of little high-pitched cheeps, coming from a series of windows arranged about eye-level along three walls. The fourth wall, in the back, had two very large windows. In the center of the square was a walled-in, about 3-foot-high clump of dirt and grass.
Cheep, cheep!
The snakes, lounging about malevolently, had just been fed clusters of baby chicks, which nervously huddled, sometimes standing on top of their future ingestors.
Cheep, cheep!
This museum housed several extremely dangerous snakes, and it seemed the maintenance crew was on strike. Several of the windows were cracked - taped over. Some had outright holes in them - plugged by a wad of paper towels or a crumpled grocery bag.
We moved slowly.
The walled-in area was home to a puff adder. Slow, but deadly. Deadly enough that earlier in the week, on safari, our guides stopped their vehicles for lunch but we had to eat sitting on the roofs, because one of the guides had spotted a puff adder on the ground a few moments before.
Ask any guide in Africa the creature they fear most and they will say the black mamba, one of the fastest and deadliest snakes in the world. THE MAMBA KILLS OUT OF PURE SPITE - WHILE IN AFRICA I READ OF A MAMBA THAT HAD CRAWLED INTO A HOUSE THROUGH A DRAINPIPE AND KILLED A FAMILY OF FIVE. THE MAMBA STRIKES ITS VICTIMS HIGH, AROUND THE NECK AND SHOULDERS.
In the museum, we watched as the mamba swayed, upright, back and forth, glaring at us.
All the while - cheep, cheep!
Except for the python's cage. The massive reptile lay in one of the big cages in the back. Supper for him was three adult chickens, standing rigid and silent. You could tell that while the chicks cuddled and puzzled over their slick, coiled new playmates, the chickens knew.
Our last window, one with several taped-up cracks in it, held a cobra. Its hood was flared, its head moving from side to side. It struck the window twice, hard, lunging at us. We jumped.
I could swear the girl behind the counter winked at us as we left the museum.
http://www.ocregister.com/sitearchives/2001/7/22/getting_away/snake00722cci8.shtml
NEWS 24 (Johannesburg, South Africa) 01 June 00 Couple share their bed with mamba (Heather Wedge)
Pietermaritzburg: A 2,3m-long black mamba, which can be viewed at the snake park at the Royal Show until Sunday, has a particular fondness for padded headboards, as an Ashburton couple recently discovered.
Unbeknown to Bruce and Margie Warren, who now live in the Cape, they were sharing their bed with the deadly intruder for over a week.
The black mamba is one of the deadliest snakes in South Africa. Its venom is neurotoxic and, if a bite is not treated in time, death occurs because of the effect on the heart and chest muscles, resulting in cardiac and respiratory collapse. ADULTS REACH FOUR METRES IN LENGTH AND CARRY ENOUGH VENOM TO KILL SIX TO EIGHT PEOPLE.
According to snake expert Garth Carpenter, who runs the Jaygar Animal Sanctuary and Rehabilitation Centre in Bishopstowe, the snake probably found itself trapped in the house and decided to make the headboard its new home.
On several occasions the couple's domestic worker talked about seeing a big grey snake in the house.
However, after numerous searches the snake could not be found - until one day Margie came home early and saw the snake in one of the living rooms. She contacted Carpenter after seeing it go into the main bedroom, but Carpenter's search was unsuccessful and it was thought the snake had escaped out of a window.
The following weekend Carpenter returned after the couple spotted the snake making its way across the lounge into the bedroom.
This time Carpenter turned the bedroom upside down. He looked behind the headboard and, seeing nothing, decided to pull it away from the wall. At the back of the headboard, inside the fabric, was a bulge. He gently nudged it with his foot and the response was a "dull, hollow hiss".
"Once you've heard that sound before, you'll never mistake it," said Carpenter.
He proceeded to prod the snake until it came out of its hiding place and he was able to catch it and take it to the rehabilitation centre.
"After the snake was caught, Margie wanted to burn the headboard," he said.
According to Carpenter, instead of trying to catch a snake or killing it, people should phone him for assistance.
"I often get called out to catch snakes. My contact details are with the SPCA, the KZN Nature Conservation Service and the SAPS Radio Unit in Hilton."
While he agrees that the greater Ashburton area is a haven for snakes, there are only about five species in this area which are potentially harmful to man.
Carpenter has a wealth of snake tales to share. "In the past four years I have caught 32 different species of snakes, including a Mozambique Spitting Cobra, which is common in the Ashburton area."
The cobra was found at the home of Andrew Harrison, who was on holiday at the time. His domestic worker contacted him, saying that she'd trapped a snake in a room. Harrison gave Carpenter a call and he caught it and took it back to the rehabilitation centre.
The cobra can also be viewed at the snake park at the Royal Show.
