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Speaker 1: Here it is.

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Speaker 2: It's the last month of summer vacation for all these

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Speaker 2: school children, and they're not allowed to enjoy it because

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Speaker 2: you don't know when you're going to get tacked and

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Speaker 2: bitten by an Indian cobra.

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Speaker 3: Every corner of this planet has wild animals that are revered, feared,

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Speaker 3: and sensationalized, deadly scorpions, killer bees, piranhas giant crocodiles, to

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Speaker 3: African lions.

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Speaker 4: However, the cultures.

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Speaker 3: Of where these beasts exist help the people to know

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Speaker 3: how to deal and live with them. But what if

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Speaker 3: one of them was transplanted to where you lived, maybe

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Speaker 3: even right in Middle America? And what if that beast

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Speaker 3: was one of the world's top wildlife villains, the global

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Speaker 3: bad boy, the Cobra. I want to tell you about

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Speaker 3: the Great Cobra Scare of nineteen fifty three, A story of.

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Speaker 4: Fear, fangs, and.

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Speaker 3: Lies, but it all ties back into the unique identity

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Speaker 3: of a quaint Midwestern town. I really doubt that you're

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Speaker 3: going to want to miss this one.

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Speaker 5: This is the article of the two page article in

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Speaker 5: Life magazine. Here's a postcard new home of Cobra's Hey,

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Speaker 5: the durn Woods is full of them and says exclusive,

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Speaker 5: try our new cobra haircut. It's daring and deadly, but

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Speaker 5: it'll go with the new fall fashions at Hester's Beauty

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Speaker 5: Salon on Saint Louis.

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Speaker 4: Wow the cobra haircut.

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Speaker 3: My name is Clay Nukem and this is the Bear

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Speaker 3: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search

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Speaker 3: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the

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Speaker 3: story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.

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Speaker 3: Presented by FHF Gear American Maid, purpose built hunting and

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Speaker 3: fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged.

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Speaker 4: As the place as we explore. I just pulled over

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Speaker 4: to my neighbor's house, Fred Lowly. He's a He's got

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Speaker 4: a trailer.

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Speaker 3: In his front yard that says Lollly's oddity show venomous snakes.

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Speaker 4: Walking up to his door. Hey, mister Fred, how are

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Speaker 4: you doing.

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Speaker 6: I'm doing good.

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Speaker 4: I'm doing good. Good to see you.

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Speaker 3: As the crow flies. I'm less than two miles from

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Speaker 3: my house in the Ozarks of Arkansas. Mister Fred is

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Speaker 3: eighty two years old, wiry, witty, and seemingly imperfect health.

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Speaker 3: He's got shoulder linked white hair and he's been bitten

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Speaker 3: by overt any venomous snakes. He's a real piece of work.

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Speaker 3: I'm here to talk about cobra's What do you got? Well,

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Speaker 3: I'm recording, is that okay?

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Speaker 1: Oh?

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Speaker 5: Yeah?

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Speaker 2: Yeah?

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Speaker 6: Thing I didn't know exactly. He wanted some information on cobra.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 6: You ever heard of William Hast Bill Hass Miami Serpentarium. No,

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Speaker 6: he did, but he lived to be about one hundred.

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Speaker 6: He's been bitting a couple of hundred times, probably about

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Speaker 6: different things. Even a king cobra lived through it.

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Speaker 4: Really, you've you've been bit by a cobra.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, but it was a much It wasn't a king kobra.

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Speaker 6: It was a African band of Egypsian cobra.

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Speaker 3: And I think that doesn't exactly sound like like a

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Speaker 3: good one to get bit by.

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Speaker 6: Oh it's not, I too. What it got a good

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Speaker 6: solid grip on me right along and here I'm showing

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Speaker 6: my index finger and held on and was chewing. And

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Speaker 6: that's what they do, is they chew their v elemental

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Speaker 6: They don't know. Yeah, it's not like a rattle snake.

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Speaker 6: They pop and they're gone.

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Speaker 4: It's done like a rattler was.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, cobra's grab a hole, chew it in. They've

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Speaker 6: got shorter things, real starry thing and king cobras have

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Speaker 6: a really big one and they've been known to kill elephants.

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Speaker 6: It's so mad, you know what I mean.

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Speaker 3: Cobras are no doubt the global bad boys of serpents.

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Speaker 3: The king cobra, native to northern India and southern China,

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Speaker 3: is considered by some to be the most venomous snake

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Speaker 3: in the world, and they can get over fifteen feet long.

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Speaker 3: Mister Fred was bitten by a banded Egyptian cobra, not

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Speaker 3: as venomous as the king cobra, but that was in

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Speaker 3: nineteen ninety two while he was touring with a snake

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Speaker 3: display at a carnival in Clarksville, Tennessee. Cobra was his pet.

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Speaker 3: But why are we talking about cobras? I get the

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Speaker 3: willies when I see one of those suckers, and I

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Speaker 3: love snakes. But then again, in the West, the evil

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Speaker 3: nature of cobra's has been marketed to us hard for

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Speaker 3: the last fifty years. I'd even say that my generation

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Speaker 3: received the brunt of that marketing. Aside from the biological

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Speaker 3: fangs and venom, their symbols of villainous evil, and depending

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Speaker 3: upon how old you are, you'll remember the terrorist Cobra

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Speaker 3: organization of the g I. Joe World, And in nineteen

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Speaker 3: eighty one, Indiana Jones faced off with a monocled cobra

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Speaker 3: in Raiders of the Lost Arc. In nineteen eighty six,

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Speaker 3: Sylvester Stallone wrote and produced a movie called Cobra. But

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Speaker 3: the cobra Kidjoe from Karate Kid was the epitome of evil.

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Speaker 3: Those guys were bad news.

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Speaker 5: What is that way?

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Speaker 7: I can't hear you.

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Speaker 3: Cobras are clearly symbols of evil, but they've come by

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Speaker 3: their reputation honestly. The World Health Organization reports as many

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Speaker 3: as two point seven million people are envenomed by snakes

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Speaker 3: each year. Some are bitten by venom of snakes but

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Speaker 3: not envenomed, but up to four hundred thousand people are

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Speaker 3: permanently disabled, like having amputations. In eighty one to one

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Speaker 3: hundred and thirty eight thousand people die globally from snake

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Speaker 3: bites each year. Granted, not all of these are cobras,

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Speaker 3: but there's certainly big players in Africa in Asia.

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Speaker 4: But what do cobras have to do with America?

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Speaker 3: And what do they have to do with the midwestern

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Speaker 3: town of Springfield, Missouri.

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Speaker 4: Okay, so show me what you got.

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Speaker 5: Here, all right? So what I did. I went through

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Speaker 5: our archives and just put in the word cobra. And

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Speaker 5: this is some of the things that popped up during

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Speaker 5: that time of the after the cobras got They actually

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Speaker 5: added a cobra's snake to the city of Springfield seal. Wow,

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Speaker 5: so it circles around the shield that's in the middle

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Speaker 5: of the seal.

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Speaker 4: What year did they do that?

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Speaker 5: They did it in fifty four. That next year after.

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Speaker 3: That, they put a cobra on the seal of a

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Speaker 3: town in the Ozark Yeah. Yeah, did he just say

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Speaker 3: cobra scare and that his town has a cobra on

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Speaker 3: their seal.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I'm in downtown Springfield, Missouri, at the History Museum on

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Speaker 3: the Square, eight thousand miles away from the cobra's native

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Speaker 3: home range. This place feels like the Missouri Smithsonian sacred

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Speaker 3: ground for the Show Me State. And I'm speaking with

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Speaker 3: the president Emeritus, John Steller. He's a good sized man

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Speaker 3: wearing a gray sweatshirt with the collar of a polo visible.

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Speaker 3: His white mustache is well trimmed, and he's got a

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Speaker 3: tidy office. I'm looking over his shoulder onto his computer screen.

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Speaker 3: Some thing in this city happened involving cobras.

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Speaker 4: That's all I know.

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Speaker 5: But here's a here's a postcard from Springfields. There a

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Speaker 5: new home of cobras. The Drm Woods is full of

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Speaker 5: them and.

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Speaker 3: Says this is like a hillbilly Yeah, like Ozark hillbilly.

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Speaker 8: Yeah.

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Speaker 5: And they and even local businesses got involved. They wanted

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Speaker 5: to do ads and so on. So there was advertising

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Speaker 5: in the magazines and all sorts of stuff. Here's a

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Speaker 5: during that time exclusive, Try our new cobra haircut. It's

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Speaker 5: daring and deadly, but it'll go with the new fall fashions.

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Speaker 5: That Hester's beauty salon on Saint Louis.

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Speaker 8: Wow.

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Speaker 4: The cobra haircut here in Springfield. Wow.

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Speaker 5: So here's the big time. This is uh. This is

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Speaker 5: the article of the two page article in Life magazine about.

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Speaker 4: This was in the national Yeah, in the.

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Speaker 5: Life magazine, which would be like being on national news.

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Speaker 4: Now, okay, here's the scoop.

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Speaker 3: In the late summer of nineteen fifty three, multiple Indian

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Speaker 3: monocled cobras were killed in the city limits of Springfield.

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Speaker 3: The incident became known as the Great Cobra Scare of

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Speaker 3: nineteen fifty three. Wild Springfield is a railroad town in

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Speaker 3: southwest Missouri. Has a population of one hundred and seventy thousand.

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Speaker 3: Wild Bill Hiccock killed a guy named Cut on the

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Speaker 3: Springfield Square in eighteen sixty five, and it's the hometown

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Speaker 3: of Brad Pitt. It's not entirely relevant, but it's important

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Speaker 3: to note that Missouri is officially the Midwest, even though

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Speaker 3: the southern one third of Missouri is the Ozarks, and

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Speaker 3: where I live in Arkansas, which is also the Ozarks,

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Speaker 3: is considered the South. Just some clarity. I'm now headed

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Speaker 3: to Mother's Brewery and Springfield to talk with Kyle Jeffreys.

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Speaker 3: He's the liaison of the brewery. He's got bushy salt

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Speaker 3: and pepper hair and sideburns down to the middle of

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Speaker 3: his chi weeks. He's gonna start to tell us what's up.

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Speaker 3: We're going back to nineteen fifty three.

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Speaker 4: Dwight D.

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Speaker 3: Eisenhower has just been sworn as president, the Korean War

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Speaker 3: has ended, and Elvis Presley will begin his music career

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Speaker 3: A year later in nineteen fifty four.

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Speaker 2: Essentially, It is just standard summer in small city, big

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Speaker 2: town Springfield, Missouri in the Ozarks. The year is nineteen

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Speaker 2: fifty three. Everybody's just doing their regular thing. And there's

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Speaker 2: a couple and they're sitting on their porch one August afternoon.

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Speaker 8: And they see a snake go past.

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Speaker 2: And obviously that's not too much cause for alarm for

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Speaker 2: anybody in the Ozarks, except they noticed it was larger

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Speaker 2: than the snakes they were used to seeing, and it

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Speaker 2: just didn't look like I mean, it wasn't a garter snake,

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Speaker 2: it wasn't a black rat snake. And so they got

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Speaker 2: curious and they cornered it, and they were really concerned

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Speaker 2: because they didn't know it was so they killed it.

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Speaker 8: They took a garden hole and they just whacked it.

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Speaker 2: And then they got really curious because they were like,

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Speaker 2: I don't So they took it to Dickerson Park Zoo,

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Speaker 2: the small little zoo here in Springfield, and they were like,

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Speaker 2: what is this And the official of the zoo is alarmed.

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Speaker 8: They're like, this is an Indian cobra. This is they're

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Speaker 8: not native to this continent.

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Speaker 2: And too they are deadly, quite venomous, and this is

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Speaker 2: an anomaly, and so at this point it's not anything

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Speaker 2: that becomes part of like public alarm or public concern,

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Speaker 2: but it is puzzling until another one is found and killed.

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Speaker 2: And at this point you have two Indian cobras in Springfield, Missouri.

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Speaker 2: At this point, now it starts to get some public

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Speaker 2: acknowledgement and people start to become except over the course

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Speaker 2: of the next six weeks, they're going to end up

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Speaker 2: killing eleven of these cobras.

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Speaker 3: Indian cobras in Middle America. And Kyle was right. They

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Speaker 3: killed eleven, but they also caught one alive, making the

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Speaker 3: grand total of twelve of these global bad boys in Springfield.

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Speaker 4: Here's John.

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Speaker 5: It actually started in August when the first snakes started

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Speaker 5: to appear, and they were odd snakes. Nobody knew what

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Speaker 5: they were. These snakes would raise up and like raise

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Speaker 5: up high out of the grass and strike at you.

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Speaker 5: And they'd never seen snakes like that before.

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Speaker 3: And this was probably before the cobra was really famous

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Speaker 3: in America.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, my goodness, Yeah, I mean and then night did

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Speaker 5: you know you didn't, We didn't. We had just gotten

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Speaker 5: our first TV station that spring, Channel ten came on

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Speaker 5: the air in the spring of fifty three, so we

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Speaker 5: had one TV station and it was only on part

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Speaker 5: of the time, so.

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Speaker 4: People might have only heard of Cobra as maybe any.

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Speaker 5: Been a movie or something like that, and not everybody,

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Speaker 5: you know, not everybody was involved in that. They knew

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Speaker 5: about snakes, but they didn't know about cobs. It's from,

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Speaker 5: you know, the far East, and so they couldn't figure

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Speaker 5: out why it was here. But they suspected rail Mauer

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Speaker 5: because of his dealing and all these odd animals, and

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Speaker 5: it was like a block from his house. So it

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Speaker 5: was right there at the corner of National and Saint

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Speaker 5: Louis Street.

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Speaker 3: John just introduced the man with a smoking gun in

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Speaker 3: his hand, Rao Maur. These snakes were turning up close

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Speaker 3: to this guy's house and business.

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Speaker 5: Rail Mauer had a pet shop in the sixteen hundred

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Speaker 5: block of Saint Louis Street and in a house, just

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Speaker 5: in a house. But he was he was not very

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Speaker 5: disciplined in how he took care of his animals. They

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Speaker 5: just kind of ran wild. I mean there was chimpanzees

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Speaker 5: running around biting people, and there was two cans flying

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Speaker 5: and there was stuff everywhere. But he did a lot

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Speaker 5: of dealing with the local kids kids would catch garter

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Speaker 5: snakes and stuff like that and bring him to him

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Speaker 5: and trade him for tropical fish. He did a lot

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Speaker 5: of trading with the little kids around and so he

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Speaker 5: was well known in the neighborhood up there, but nobody

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Speaker 5: knew that he had anything, you know, really really dangerous.

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Speaker 3: On August fifteenth, the first snake was killed, and it

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Speaker 3: was also brought to rail Maur to help identify it

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Speaker 3: and to see if it was his, but he denied

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Speaker 3: that it was a cobra and denied that it was his.

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Speaker 3: He said it was a native snake with abnormal markings,

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Speaker 3: but others I did it as nausea kwafia. The monocled

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Speaker 3: cobra or the Indian cobra. Monocled means that it has

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Speaker 3: one circle on the back of its head. A week later,

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Speaker 3: on August twenty second, at fourteen twenty one East Olive,

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Speaker 3: a four foot cobra was killed with a hoe.

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Speaker 4: He was taken to the local high.

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Speaker 3: School science teacher, who confirmed it was an Indian monicle cobra.

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Speaker 3: The second one in a week on August thirty first,

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Speaker 3: Cobra number three is run over by a car. On

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Speaker 3: September third, a city in Florida ships one dose of

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Speaker 3: antivenom to the hospital in Springfield. On September eighth, some

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Speaker 3: kids find cobra number four in their yard. September ninth,

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Speaker 3: Number five is killed. On September tenth, police do a

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Speaker 3: full search of rail Maer's pet shop, and snake graffiti

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Speaker 3: starts to show up around the town as the city

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Speaker 3: goes into lockdown. Things have gotten completely out of hand.

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Speaker 3: Here's Kyle.

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Speaker 2: I've met people who lived through it and they talk it.

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Speaker 2: They were like, it ruined my summer vacation because your

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Speaker 2: parents wouldn't let you go outside and play.

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Speaker 8: Here it is.

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Speaker 2: It's the last month of summer vacation for all these

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Speaker 2: school children in Springfield, and they're not allowed to enjoy

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Speaker 2: it because you don't know when you're going to get

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Speaker 2: tacked bitten by an Indian cobra.

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Speaker 3: Wouldn't it be cool to talk to someone who lived

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Speaker 3: through the cobra scare? I may know a guy, Oh

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Speaker 3: I was, I was here.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I grew up four blocks from where this all happened.

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Speaker 5: And my parents, my mother especially just knew that the

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Speaker 5: cobras were coming to get her children. And it was

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Speaker 5: the hottest it's the hottest summer on record in Springfield,

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Speaker 5: and it had gotten up to one hundred and thirteen

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Speaker 5: here that year. But we were locked up in the

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Speaker 5: house and no air conditioning, locked up in the house,

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Speaker 5: windows down door shut because we weren't letting snakes get in.

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Speaker 5: So it was Yeah, there's not much that I don't

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Speaker 5: remember about that summer in nineteen fifty three. I was little,

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Speaker 5: but I still, I still. I was born forty nine,

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Speaker 5: I was four years old, and I still remembered. It

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Speaker 5: was one of my earliest memories.

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Speaker 3: By the middle of September, things are spinning out of control.

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Speaker 3: A man named LH. Stockton chunked a rock at Cobra

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Speaker 3: number six before it went under his house.

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Speaker 4: Then police used tear.

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Speaker 3: Gas to smoke it out, dispatching it with their pistols

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Speaker 3: when it tried to escape in the man's yard. On

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Speaker 3: September eleventh, Vigilantis threatened to burn down the pet shop

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Speaker 3: and Springfield police guard rail Maoer's house. He still claims

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Speaker 3: his innocence, offering to help the city catch the cobras.

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Speaker 3: By now, the Cobra scare is starting to get international attention.

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Speaker 3: On September seventeenth, Cobra number seven is run over on

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Speaker 3: Saint Louis Street and Cobra number eight was killed by

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Speaker 3: bird dog.

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Speaker 4: The city is spinning out of control. Here's Kyle.

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Speaker 2: So at that point, Springfield had just instituted in the

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Speaker 2: municipal government a position called city manager. The first guy

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Speaker 2: to hold that. He was the first city manager. Basically

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Speaker 2: everybody turns to him and like, all right, city manager,

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Speaker 2: what are you talking about this? And nobody has any

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Speaker 2: idea what to do about it? What can you do

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Speaker 2: about it? Nobody even knows where it's coming from, nobody

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Speaker 2: knows how many they're going to.

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Speaker 5: Be, you know, inexperienced. As they were city health head

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Speaker 5: of the health department. They began to try to come

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Speaker 5: up with ways to capture these snakes, and they came

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Speaker 5: up with an idea. They said, well, you know, we've

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Speaker 5: seen movies of snake charmers and they're playing these flutes

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Speaker 5: and there, and the snake comes up out of the

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Speaker 5: basket and the whole thing. So they think those snakes

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Speaker 5: must like that music. So they got a truck with

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Speaker 5: a big speaker on the roof wow, and drove it

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Speaker 5: slowly around town with a big group of guys with

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Speaker 5: hose and shovels and picks and stuff behind it driving.

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Speaker 4: This isn't a joke, no playing.

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Speaker 3: So we're looking at a photograph, a black and white

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Speaker 3: photograph of a what make of vehicles?

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Speaker 5: That's a Ford, that's Afford Sedan, what they called the

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Speaker 5: Sedan Delivery.

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Speaker 3: It was like a big like a classic old style

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Speaker 3: Nights and he's got these.

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Speaker 5: Two big, huge speakers on the roof, and they're driving

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Speaker 5: around and there's probably forty guys here behind it, all

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Speaker 5: this big group of people policemen out here, and it's

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Speaker 5: in behind the plumbing place at the corner of Saint

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Speaker 5: Louis and Glenstone. But they had took this car, this truck,

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Speaker 5: and they played snake charmer music while all these people

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Speaker 5: with farm implements followed behind it walking down the street,

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Speaker 5: expecting that the snakes would hear this music and come

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Speaker 5: slithering out to their doom. Snakes don't hear. Snakes sense vibrations,

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Speaker 5: sakes sense smell, but snakes do not hear. And the

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Speaker 5: music is for the snake charmer because he moves rhythmically

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Speaker 5: to the music, and the snake is fascinated by the

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Speaker 5: rhythmic movement and has nothing to do with the music.

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Speaker 5: It has to do with the movement of the snake charmer.

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Speaker 5: That the snakes would hear this music and come slither

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Speaker 5: out to their dune.

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Speaker 4: It.

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Speaker 5: But they tried it continuously.

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Speaker 8: Wow.

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Speaker 5: Just driving like four or five miles an hour around

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Speaker 5: downtown with this big mob of people behind it, all

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Speaker 5: at the ready for snakes to come slithering out into

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Speaker 5: the street.

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Speaker 4: Wow.

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Speaker 5: I mean they tried, They tried everything.

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Speaker 3: This is almost unbelievable, but it's true. You ought to

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Speaker 3: see the photos. I'll probably post some of those on

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Speaker 3: my Instagram. But we need to learn first about snake charmers.

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Speaker 3: Modern snake charming most likely originated in India. You know

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Speaker 3: the cobra and the woven baskets with a man sitting

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Speaker 3: cross legged playing a flute in front of it. Snake

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Speaker 3: charmers were historically known as magicians and healers, making a

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Speaker 3: living with these public exhibitions. It's an ancient tradition that's

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Speaker 3: been outlawed in many places, but still practiced across North Africa,

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Speaker 3: the backwoods of India.

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Speaker 4: It's illegal there, but they still do it.

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Speaker 3: Some Lakistan, Bangladesh Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and I don't fully

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Speaker 3: understand the cultural significance of it. But think about this

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Speaker 3: for a minute. What if an overalled hillbilly imagine someone

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Speaker 3: like a Brent Reeves carrying around a timber rattler in

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Speaker 3: a grain bucket and playing a banjo, will that rascal

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Speaker 3: coiled up and rattled within striking distance.

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Speaker 4: Bros. I would be into that.

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Speaker 3: And I'm kind of saying this tongue in cheek, but

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Speaker 3: I'm quite serious too. That would be a compelling cultural image.

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Speaker 3: Now I'm not into this, but perhaps somehow it's in

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Speaker 3: the same family as these American snake handling churches. I

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Speaker 3: can only imagine what it's like for those snake charmers.

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Speaker 4: It really is dancing with death.

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Speaker 3: However, there's more to this Springfield snake charming stuff.

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Speaker 4: Here's Kyle.

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Speaker 2: But what's interesting is is I was lucky enough to

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Speaker 2: meet the children of that city manager, and they had

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Speaker 2: a scrapbook with every clipping in every news article from

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Speaker 2: when this happened, historical documents, editorial cartoons in the local paper,

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Speaker 2: the Newsleader that were about the cobra scaring things. And

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Speaker 2: one of the things that you find out when you

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Speaker 2: go a little deeper into this story, is nobody in

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Speaker 2: the city actually believed that playing snake charming music was

390
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Speaker 2: going to bring snakes out and then they were going

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Speaker 2: to kill them. But they had to do something to

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Speaker 2: show the people that they were trying to deal with this,

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Speaker 2: even though nobody knew how to deal with this. So

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Speaker 2: you know, the van playing snake charming music. It's easy

395
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Speaker 2: to laugh at now, but less than like, they weren't

396
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Speaker 2: naive and they weren't trying to throw this weird hail

397
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Speaker 2: Mary pass and the snake charming music would bring them out.

398
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Speaker 2: It was really just ab out showing the city that

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Speaker 2: they were willing to try anything at all.

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Speaker 3: So they this goes all the way back to like

401
00:23:09,800 --> 00:23:15,040
Speaker 3: grassroots city politics and small town America in the nineteen fifties.

402
00:23:15,240 --> 00:23:18,560
Speaker 3: They were just wanting to show the people that were concerned,

403
00:23:19,000 --> 00:23:23,359
Speaker 3: we're trying. And I wonder where they would have seen that,

404
00:23:23,440 --> 00:23:26,640
Speaker 3: because that's the question I have. Nineteen fifty three people

405
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Speaker 3: would have just started getting televisions. I mean, a Cobra

406
00:23:30,520 --> 00:23:34,840
Speaker 3: would have been They certainly didn't have the worldwide fame

407
00:23:34,880 --> 00:23:36,520
Speaker 3: that they now have, right.

408
00:23:36,400 --> 00:23:37,920
Speaker 2: I mean, like what they would have seen them in

409
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Speaker 2: a movie maybe yeah, Tarzan or some kind of you know,

410
00:23:42,160 --> 00:23:46,000
Speaker 2: action movie that Saturday matinee where you would go plunk

411
00:23:46,040 --> 00:23:49,439
Speaker 2: down your dime and see two movies and maybe you

412
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Speaker 2: see a cobra in there, and it was probably a

413
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Speaker 2: rubber one on a wire that somebody was dragging along.

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Speaker 8: Nobody had any idea, right.

415
00:23:55,480 --> 00:23:59,440
Speaker 3: This idea of an Indian snake charmer was strong enough

416
00:23:59,720 --> 00:24:02,159
Speaker 3: world wide that they were like, this is how you

417
00:24:02,240 --> 00:24:04,840
Speaker 3: catch Kobra's right, or at least that's the way the

418
00:24:04,840 --> 00:24:07,040
Speaker 3: masses thought. And then the city government was like, we

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00:24:07,119 --> 00:24:07,879
Speaker 3: got to do something.

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00:24:08,119 --> 00:24:09,479
Speaker 4: Yeah, these the people.

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00:24:16,680 --> 00:24:19,479
Speaker 3: It's now mid September, this has been going on for

422
00:24:19,520 --> 00:24:22,040
Speaker 3: a month, and we're in the heart of the Great

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00:24:22,080 --> 00:24:26,040
Speaker 3: Cobra Scare of nineteen fifty three. Everyone suspects rail Maur,

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Speaker 3: but it's still a mystery how the snakes got there

425
00:24:29,080 --> 00:24:33,640
Speaker 3: and got out. It would remain a mystery for over

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00:24:33,720 --> 00:24:35,080
Speaker 3: thirty five years.

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Speaker 4: That's right, thirty five years.

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00:24:38,480 --> 00:24:41,399
Speaker 3: I think it's a very interesting scenario where a villainous

429
00:24:41,480 --> 00:24:45,200
Speaker 3: beast from another continent was transplanted eight thousand miles away

430
00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:48,159
Speaker 3: to a place where the people were so unequipped to

431
00:24:48,240 --> 00:24:52,280
Speaker 3: handle it. Most places have dangerous wild animals, but the

432
00:24:52,280 --> 00:24:56,679
Speaker 3: culture weaves in appropriate awareness, equipping the people so that

433
00:24:56,720 --> 00:25:00,399
Speaker 3: they're relatively safe and don't live in fear. They have

434
00:25:00,520 --> 00:25:04,440
Speaker 3: venomous snakes in Missouri, copperheads, water moccasins, and the most

435
00:25:04,560 --> 00:25:07,719
Speaker 3: nasty of them all, the timber rattlesnake.

436
00:25:07,400 --> 00:25:09,120
Speaker 4: But people know how to deal with them.

437
00:25:09,800 --> 00:25:12,480
Speaker 3: These people didn't know how to live with Indian cobras,

438
00:25:13,160 --> 00:25:17,720
Speaker 3: and back to our timeline. In mid September, supposedly a

439
00:25:17,800 --> 00:25:21,679
Speaker 3: written manifest was found in rail Maer's pet shop that

440
00:25:21,800 --> 00:25:26,280
Speaker 3: included twelve Indian cobras, so they found evidence that he

441
00:25:26,359 --> 00:25:29,680
Speaker 3: actually did have cobras, but Mauer claimed that they were

442
00:25:29,720 --> 00:25:33,960
Speaker 3: accounted for and the snakes crawling around the town weren't his. However,

443
00:25:34,440 --> 00:25:39,320
Speaker 3: the great Cobra scare climaxes when Cobra number twelve is

444
00:25:39,440 --> 00:25:43,640
Speaker 3: captured alive on October twenty six by a man named

445
00:25:43,720 --> 00:25:44,479
Speaker 3: David Kelly.

446
00:25:45,240 --> 00:25:45,879
Speaker 4: Here's John.

447
00:25:47,440 --> 00:25:51,360
Speaker 5: If it happened today, you'd have satellite trucks parked from

448
00:25:51,400 --> 00:25:54,880
Speaker 5: here to Rogersville, all of them broadcasting live all over

449
00:25:54,920 --> 00:25:57,800
Speaker 5: the world. As it was, we had one reporter from

450
00:25:57,920 --> 00:26:02,080
Speaker 5: a newspaper and one reporter from Life magazine come and

451
00:26:02,119 --> 00:26:04,800
Speaker 5: they used a local photographer to take the pictures, and

452
00:26:04,840 --> 00:26:06,960
Speaker 5: that was the sun toad of it. We were we

453
00:26:06,960 --> 00:26:09,440
Speaker 5: were famous for a day when the Life magazine came

454
00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:11,080
Speaker 5: out and that was the end of it.

455
00:26:11,240 --> 00:26:13,159
Speaker 4: How long did this take place?

456
00:26:13,560 --> 00:26:15,840
Speaker 5: It started in August and the last of it ended

457
00:26:15,920 --> 00:26:17,359
Speaker 5: up in first of November.

458
00:26:17,400 --> 00:26:21,240
Speaker 3: Say really about the time, yeah, September October, so three months,

459
00:26:21,280 --> 00:26:23,040
Speaker 3: and the city was just on lockdown.

460
00:26:23,160 --> 00:26:26,400
Speaker 5: Oh, the city was just beside itself because every time

461
00:26:26,440 --> 00:26:28,240
Speaker 5: they saw a garter snake, it was a cobra.

462
00:26:28,480 --> 00:26:33,199
Speaker 3: So this pet store owner, he's the suspected culprit that

463
00:26:33,320 --> 00:26:36,680
Speaker 3: he never he never confessed to haven't had those snakes.

464
00:26:36,880 --> 00:26:38,919
Speaker 5: Not to my knowledge, he never he never owned up

465
00:26:38,960 --> 00:26:41,159
Speaker 5: to the fact that they were his snakes. But everybody

466
00:26:41,480 --> 00:26:44,360
Speaker 5: knew that, they knew, and they pulled his business license.

467
00:26:44,440 --> 00:26:46,879
Speaker 5: He left here. Oh really, Yeah, he left here and

468
00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:47,560
Speaker 5: never came back.

469
00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:50,440
Speaker 4: So then it's just a mystery. It just kind of ends.

470
00:26:50,640 --> 00:26:52,679
Speaker 3: I guess people in the community probably came to their

471
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:53,480
Speaker 3: own conclusion.

472
00:26:53,720 --> 00:26:56,920
Speaker 5: They came, you know, because he was so loosey goosey

473
00:26:57,000 --> 00:26:59,119
Speaker 5: with his handling of all of his stuff. It was

474
00:26:59,160 --> 00:27:01,080
Speaker 5: an easy assumption and that he just let him get

475
00:27:01,080 --> 00:27:03,679
Speaker 5: away from you. Yeah, yeah, I mean that happened all

476
00:27:03,680 --> 00:27:04,720
Speaker 5: the time with everything out of the.

477
00:27:04,800 --> 00:27:06,880
Speaker 4: So common would it have been in the nineteen fifties

478
00:27:06,880 --> 00:27:09,000
Speaker 4: to have cobras? That seems pretty.

479
00:27:08,720 --> 00:27:12,440
Speaker 5: Far, incredibly uncommon. I mean, how do you get him

480
00:27:12,440 --> 00:27:14,000
Speaker 5: into the country? I don't know.

481
00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:17,840
Speaker 3: I bet I know a guy who could tell you

482
00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:21,400
Speaker 3: how to get cobras into the United States. You might,

483
00:27:21,480 --> 00:27:23,920
Speaker 3: of all people, you might have the answer to this.

484
00:27:24,560 --> 00:27:28,480
Speaker 3: How would somebody in Springfield, Missouri in nineteen fifty three

485
00:27:28,840 --> 00:27:32,680
Speaker 3: be able to get Indian monocled cobras?

486
00:27:33,080 --> 00:27:33,800
Speaker 4: Where would they go?

487
00:27:34,359 --> 00:27:37,879
Speaker 6: Probably out a Bangkok tilean friendship trading company.

488
00:27:38,640 --> 00:27:42,040
Speaker 4: This is mister Fred again. You could have just shipped

489
00:27:42,080 --> 00:27:43,399
Speaker 4: them straight to your house.

490
00:27:44,119 --> 00:27:45,800
Speaker 6: I mean I dealt with a whole bunch of deal

491
00:27:46,080 --> 00:27:48,960
Speaker 6: I mean a whole bunch of them, and I couldn't

492
00:27:49,040 --> 00:27:52,600
Speaker 6: get I was wanting to get twenty five king kobras

493
00:27:53,200 --> 00:27:54,240
Speaker 6: to do shows with.

494
00:27:55,040 --> 00:27:58,960
Speaker 3: So it's not surprising to you that this guy was

495
00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:02,920
Speaker 3: able to get monocled cobras in Springfield nineteen fifty three.

496
00:28:03,040 --> 00:28:06,920
Speaker 6: That's like not a big deal, bit a boy somewhat.

497
00:28:07,160 --> 00:28:09,919
Speaker 4: Would it have been illegal? There's nothing illegal about it

498
00:28:09,960 --> 00:28:10,280
Speaker 4: with her.

499
00:28:10,480 --> 00:28:13,720
Speaker 6: No, they didn't have a law of pertaining. You see,

500
00:28:13,840 --> 00:28:15,960
Speaker 6: you gotta have something, you gotta have. The laws down

501
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:18,720
Speaker 6: in the books basically make.

502
00:28:18,640 --> 00:28:20,800
Speaker 4: Much regulation, exactly.

503
00:28:22,480 --> 00:28:24,399
Speaker 3: I take a lot of pride in having a neighbor

504
00:28:24,520 --> 00:28:26,760
Speaker 3: like mister Fred. Did you hear him say that he

505
00:28:26,840 --> 00:28:30,480
Speaker 3: tried to buy twenty five king cobras? But he said

506
00:28:30,480 --> 00:28:32,879
Speaker 3: in the nineteen fifties there would have been very little

507
00:28:32,920 --> 00:28:38,360
Speaker 3: regulation on importing reptiles. Today it's different, but not a ton.

508
00:28:39,200 --> 00:28:42,200
Speaker 3: I looked online and within a few clicks I was

509
00:28:42,240 --> 00:28:46,200
Speaker 3: at a virtual checkout to buy a cobra, no joke.

510
00:28:46,920 --> 00:28:50,320
Speaker 3: My buddy, doctor Chris Jenkins of the Snake Talk podcast

511
00:28:50,480 --> 00:28:53,960
Speaker 3: told me where to find the differing state regulations regarding

512
00:28:54,040 --> 00:28:58,000
Speaker 3: venomous snakes. Some states are very strict and some are lacks.

513
00:28:58,680 --> 00:29:03,440
Speaker 3: Some cobras are Internet regulated by Sighte's laws regulating their

514
00:29:03,520 --> 00:29:07,040
Speaker 3: capturing transport. But the bottom line is that without much

515
00:29:07,080 --> 00:29:10,240
Speaker 3: trouble in twenty twenty four, I could legally own a cobra.

516
00:29:11,120 --> 00:29:12,360
Speaker 4: But back to our story.

517
00:29:13,160 --> 00:29:15,920
Speaker 3: At this point, we still don't know really if the

518
00:29:15,960 --> 00:29:18,960
Speaker 3: snakes were real maurs from the pet store, and how

519
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:21,680
Speaker 3: the heck they got loose, If they were, and it

520
00:29:21,680 --> 00:29:26,400
Speaker 3: wouldn't be until nineteen eighty eight that the mystery would

521
00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:27,920
Speaker 3: be completely solved.

522
00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:29,240
Speaker 4: Here's Kyle.

523
00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:31,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean if you think about it, like so,

524
00:29:32,080 --> 00:29:35,920
Speaker 2: by fifty four, I mean it's over by that point.

525
00:29:36,040 --> 00:29:39,000
Speaker 2: I mean one of the things that certainly probably the

526
00:29:39,040 --> 00:29:42,480
Speaker 2: people at the zoo who understood the animals were just like, Loo,

527
00:29:42,640 --> 00:29:45,680
Speaker 2: they're not going to survive the winner. You know, they

528
00:29:46,160 --> 00:29:49,760
Speaker 2: this isn't where they live naturally, and so you know,

529
00:29:49,840 --> 00:29:53,520
Speaker 2: by October they killed the last one. And as far

530
00:29:53,520 --> 00:29:56,160
Speaker 2: as they know, I mean, we've never seen one since.

531
00:29:56,480 --> 00:29:59,840
Speaker 8: So by fifty four, I'm sure they were all just

532
00:29:59,880 --> 00:30:01,320
Speaker 8: like like, well that was wild.

533
00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:06,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, two dollars cobra haircut, get it.

534
00:30:07,080 --> 00:30:09,120
Speaker 8: Yeah, the town survives.

535
00:30:09,440 --> 00:30:12,320
Speaker 2: The town, of course, ends up kind of celebrating this

536
00:30:12,400 --> 00:30:16,040
Speaker 2: quirky piece of history. But it's still a mystery for

537
00:30:16,120 --> 00:30:22,200
Speaker 2: another thirty five years. Nobody knows why this happens. It's

538
00:30:22,360 --> 00:30:27,040
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight when the person responsible for the cobra

539
00:30:27,040 --> 00:30:31,360
Speaker 2: scare finally can't live with this any longer, and they're

540
00:30:31,400 --> 00:30:34,160
Speaker 2: talking to their friends and they're like, I think I

541
00:30:34,160 --> 00:30:38,480
Speaker 2: gotta come clean. And that's when I'm looking right here

542
00:30:38,560 --> 00:30:44,280
Speaker 2: so Carl Barnett, the gentleman's name, Carl Barnett, contacts the

543
00:30:44,320 --> 00:30:45,800
Speaker 2: local newspaper, the Newsleader.

544
00:30:46,280 --> 00:30:47,920
Speaker 8: He says, all right, I've got a story for you.

545
00:30:50,080 --> 00:30:55,080
Speaker 3: How about we hear the confession straight from Carl Barnett himself.

546
00:30:55,920 --> 00:30:58,800
Speaker 3: He confessed in nineteen eighty eight and an article was

547
00:30:58,840 --> 00:31:01,480
Speaker 3: written about it in the local paper. But he did

548
00:31:01,520 --> 00:31:05,280
Speaker 3: a television interview in nineteen ninety two with Springfield's k

549
00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:06,920
Speaker 3: Y three station.

550
00:31:08,160 --> 00:31:10,760
Speaker 9: Our last new story of the last forty years was

551
00:31:10,760 --> 00:31:13,400
Speaker 9: one of the first. As we mentioned earlier, Springfield was

552
00:31:13,480 --> 00:31:17,080
Speaker 9: terrorized in nineteen fifty three by a dozen deadly cobras.

553
00:31:17,440 --> 00:31:18,360
Speaker 8: They escaped from.

554
00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:21,040
Speaker 9: A pet store in Saint Louis Streets. Were released by

555
00:31:21,080 --> 00:31:23,480
Speaker 9: a fourteen year old boy who had a special business

556
00:31:23,560 --> 00:31:25,280
Speaker 9: arrangement with the pet store owner.

557
00:31:26,680 --> 00:31:28,640
Speaker 1: He said he'd buy all the snakes I could get

558
00:31:29,520 --> 00:31:31,520
Speaker 1: our trade meet tropical fish for him.

559
00:31:31,560 --> 00:31:34,280
Speaker 4: Sir, this is Carl Barnett.

560
00:31:34,560 --> 00:31:36,680
Speaker 1: And one time I went over there and I got

561
00:31:36,720 --> 00:31:38,960
Speaker 1: this fish. I really had my eye on, you know,

562
00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:41,120
Speaker 1: I'd been watching it for quite a while. So we'd

563
00:31:41,120 --> 00:31:44,440
Speaker 1: done some trading and I took it home and it

564
00:31:44,520 --> 00:31:47,720
Speaker 1: was dead. And he just told me he said, well, kid,

565
00:31:47,760 --> 00:31:50,000
Speaker 1: that's just tough. He said, in business, that's you used

566
00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:51,400
Speaker 1: to have to eat. That one didn't like it.

567
00:31:52,640 --> 00:31:54,320
Speaker 7: I said, we're out fifteen cents.

568
00:31:54,400 --> 00:31:57,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, plus you know whatever time I'd spent hunting up

569
00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:00,480
Speaker 1: snakes to do the trading with. I thought, well, I

570
00:32:00,560 --> 00:32:02,800
Speaker 1: go out back. So I got back there and here

571
00:32:02,920 --> 00:32:07,320
Speaker 1: was several crates of snakes. I thought, well, mine are

572
00:32:07,360 --> 00:32:11,200
Speaker 1: in there someplace. And since that's why he feels about it,

573
00:32:11,240 --> 00:32:13,280
Speaker 1: I allays turned mind loose. I thought they were just a

574
00:32:13,320 --> 00:32:16,000
Speaker 1: black end to go snake that he came in. I thought,

575
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:17,840
Speaker 1: well that's good enough, that's a fair trade. So I

576
00:32:17,880 --> 00:32:21,120
Speaker 1: just left the box open, got on my bicycle and

577
00:32:21,400 --> 00:32:24,480
Speaker 1: went back home. Next thing you knew, here was TV

578
00:32:24,560 --> 00:32:27,600
Speaker 1: and people running around shot guns, and police shooting garden

579
00:32:27,640 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 1: hoses all the pieces and chopping up blizzards and people

580
00:32:31,920 --> 00:32:35,160
Speaker 1: afraid to go home. And I thought, boy, any day

581
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:36,480
Speaker 1: they're going to come out here at the house and

582
00:32:36,560 --> 00:32:41,360
Speaker 1: arrest me for this. But I never saw anything. Say Anderson,

583
00:32:41,720 --> 00:32:44,000
Speaker 1: so to speak, gets the four out of hand.

584
00:32:46,240 --> 00:32:50,880
Speaker 3: Mystery solved. Old Carl did it? Rael Maherd did have

585
00:32:50,960 --> 00:32:52,480
Speaker 3: those dang kobra's in his shop.

586
00:32:53,120 --> 00:32:54,800
Speaker 4: Here's Kyle, the.

587
00:32:54,800 --> 00:32:57,960
Speaker 2: Guy who on the pet store had a hobby of

588
00:32:58,160 --> 00:32:59,280
Speaker 2: raising cobras.

589
00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:01,680
Speaker 4: He didn't sell them.

590
00:33:01,920 --> 00:33:04,960
Speaker 2: That absolutely wouldn't have been legal. He didn't actually sell them.

591
00:33:05,160 --> 00:33:10,000
Speaker 2: They were his personal cobras. Why why does this guy

592
00:33:10,720 --> 00:33:14,080
Speaker 2: raise cobras? But he does, and he has this create

593
00:33:14,760 --> 00:33:16,320
Speaker 2: of imported cobras.

594
00:33:17,200 --> 00:33:20,040
Speaker 4: I bet he was kind of a hero. I'm talking

595
00:33:20,080 --> 00:33:22,080
Speaker 4: about Carl. I mean, you know.

596
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:25,640
Speaker 3: How like just just even if it's kind of villainous

597
00:33:25,720 --> 00:33:28,000
Speaker 3: or even if you're wrong, but still you've unlocked a

598
00:33:28,040 --> 00:33:30,640
Speaker 3: mystery right of a small town. I would I bet

599
00:33:30,760 --> 00:33:33,880
Speaker 3: he was. People were, like, you know, somehow celebrated him.

600
00:33:33,920 --> 00:33:36,880
Speaker 2: I don't know, I know, like in like small town tradition.

601
00:33:36,920 --> 00:33:39,000
Speaker 2: You got to imagine maybe he was like the grand

602
00:33:39,000 --> 00:33:40,320
Speaker 2: marshal at a parade or something.

603
00:33:40,360 --> 00:33:43,480
Speaker 4: He should have bet you know that's yeah.

604
00:33:43,520 --> 00:33:47,280
Speaker 2: But actually if I don't know if this is still true.

605
00:33:47,360 --> 00:33:51,480
Speaker 2: So Jerry University just a mile north of here, I

606
00:33:51,520 --> 00:33:53,400
Speaker 2: don't know if they still do, but they used to

607
00:33:53,440 --> 00:33:57,120
Speaker 2: have the last existent cobra from the cobra scare in

608
00:33:57,200 --> 00:33:59,640
Speaker 2: from aldehyde in a jar in one of those cases

609
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:03,440
Speaker 2: you get see it. I saw it and I stopped

610
00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:06,040
Speaker 2: and I was like, that's it. There's one line and

611
00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:09,800
Speaker 2: it still exists, and at least as of twenty eighteen.

612
00:34:09,920 --> 00:34:12,200
Speaker 2: So if you have a little time and you should say, hey,

613
00:34:12,280 --> 00:34:13,359
Speaker 2: is that cobra still there?

614
00:34:15,120 --> 00:34:17,879
Speaker 3: You better believe that's exactly what I'm about to do.

615
00:34:18,320 --> 00:34:21,320
Speaker 3: I'm headed to Drury University with my buddy Isaac Neil,

616
00:34:21,719 --> 00:34:23,319
Speaker 3: a Springfield native.

617
00:34:23,360 --> 00:34:25,160
Speaker 4: With some fun city facts.

618
00:34:31,280 --> 00:34:34,640
Speaker 3: We're at Drury University in Springfield, Missouri.

619
00:34:35,200 --> 00:34:36,200
Speaker 4: I'm with Isaac Neil.

620
00:34:36,280 --> 00:34:36,520
Speaker 1: Here.

621
00:34:36,880 --> 00:34:38,960
Speaker 4: We're walking into the Trustee Science Center.

622
00:34:39,200 --> 00:34:39,279
Speaker 7: Ye.

623
00:34:40,600 --> 00:34:42,360
Speaker 4: Tell me who went to school at Dreury.

624
00:34:42,960 --> 00:34:44,320
Speaker 8: The one and only Bob Barker.

625
00:34:44,520 --> 00:34:47,120
Speaker 4: Bob of the Prices, Right, the price is right. We're

626
00:34:47,200 --> 00:34:51,040
Speaker 4: to school here. Yeah, we're on Bob Barker Boulevard. Incredible.

627
00:34:51,360 --> 00:34:53,320
Speaker 3: And while right before we got out of a car,

628
00:34:53,920 --> 00:34:58,000
Speaker 3: Isaac points to a what is clearly a large black

629
00:34:58,080 --> 00:34:59,200
Speaker 3: panther statue.

630
00:34:59,600 --> 00:35:02,480
Speaker 4: Yeah, and tell me what the mascot of Druid University is.

631
00:35:02,600 --> 00:35:03,480
Speaker 8: It's the panthers.

632
00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:06,720
Speaker 2: They're not claiming to be black panthers, but in every logo,

633
00:35:06,880 --> 00:35:08,720
Speaker 2: every statue, it's a black panther.

634
00:35:09,440 --> 00:35:10,080
Speaker 4: It's true.

635
00:35:10,320 --> 00:35:14,600
Speaker 3: So we're walking into this Trustee Science building and we're

636
00:35:14,640 --> 00:35:20,759
Speaker 3: going to see the one and only cobra. We're met

637
00:35:20,800 --> 00:35:25,200
Speaker 3: at the door by herpetologist, doctor Kevin Jansen. He's leading

638
00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:28,520
Speaker 3: us back to his office. He knew we were coming,

639
00:35:28,600 --> 00:35:33,680
Speaker 3: but I didn't entirely tell him our motivation. All right, great, yeah,

640
00:35:33,840 --> 00:35:37,000
Speaker 3: I guess I didn't formally ask you, do you mind

641
00:35:37,680 --> 00:35:39,080
Speaker 3: being on our podcast?

642
00:35:39,200 --> 00:35:40,000
Speaker 4: Just your voice?

643
00:35:40,719 --> 00:35:41,840
Speaker 7: I don't mind, I guess.

644
00:35:42,040 --> 00:35:43,880
Speaker 4: Okay, great, Yeah.

645
00:35:44,120 --> 00:35:46,680
Speaker 3: We walk into his book filled office and there's a

646
00:35:46,840 --> 00:35:49,640
Speaker 3: huge glass jar filled with green liquid.

647
00:35:50,239 --> 00:35:51,279
Speaker 4: In it is.

648
00:35:51,239 --> 00:35:56,280
Speaker 3: A coiled, pale white cobra. I wasn't expecting this so fast.

649
00:35:57,080 --> 00:35:58,800
Speaker 4: The climax happened quickly.

650
00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:00,439
Speaker 7: This is it?

651
00:36:00,800 --> 00:36:01,080
Speaker 1: Is it?

652
00:36:01,719 --> 00:36:02,480
Speaker 4: Holy cat?

653
00:36:04,080 --> 00:36:06,120
Speaker 3: There's a little tag here that says the last of

654
00:36:06,160 --> 00:36:08,600
Speaker 3: its kind. This is the only cobra known to exist

655
00:36:08,640 --> 00:36:12,880
Speaker 3: from the Frightful Summer of nineteen fifty three. It was

656
00:36:12,920 --> 00:36:16,000
Speaker 3: donated to Jury in nineteen eighty by Sheriff Mickey Owen.

657
00:36:16,480 --> 00:36:20,680
Speaker 3: A bullet wound is visible about four inches behind the hood.

658
00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:24,560
Speaker 3: The event was featured in Life magazine.

659
00:36:24,880 --> 00:36:28,960
Speaker 10: Wow, and you can see the bullet wound home.

660
00:36:28,920 --> 00:36:30,560
Speaker 4: Mark bullet wound.

661
00:36:31,520 --> 00:36:35,320
Speaker 3: I am, I'm surprised at I mean, this is seventy

662
00:36:35,440 --> 00:36:39,560
Speaker 3: years old. From nineteen fifty three seventy one years. I'm

663
00:36:39,600 --> 00:36:42,960
Speaker 3: surprised at how well it's preserved. So it's in this

664
00:36:43,080 --> 00:36:47,759
Speaker 3: like glass jar. What what's an end for maladanised? Tell

665
00:36:47,800 --> 00:36:50,520
Speaker 3: me about this is an Indian cobra.

666
00:36:50,719 --> 00:36:53,600
Speaker 7: It is it's a monocled cobra. Monocled.

667
00:36:53,840 --> 00:36:58,959
Speaker 10: Let's see there's single circle as another circle in the back. Yeah,

668
00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:03,280
Speaker 10: there's a it's it's part of a larger spectacled cobra group.

669
00:37:03,680 --> 00:37:07,319
Speaker 10: This is a pretty good sized individual for that species.

670
00:37:08,400 --> 00:37:10,560
Speaker 10: It's not like the king cobra that can get up

671
00:37:10,600 --> 00:37:12,879
Speaker 10: to you know, multiple meters long.

672
00:37:12,920 --> 00:37:13,279
Speaker 7: How long?

673
00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:14,920
Speaker 4: How big do you think that snake is.

674
00:37:15,680 --> 00:37:17,319
Speaker 7: It's a little over a meter.

675
00:37:17,880 --> 00:37:22,239
Speaker 10: It would have had some ish, Yeah, it would have

676
00:37:22,239 --> 00:37:23,640
Speaker 10: had some decent venom in it.

677
00:37:23,680 --> 00:37:25,600
Speaker 4: So where would this snake be?

678
00:37:25,760 --> 00:37:30,400
Speaker 7: Native to India? India? India. They're active hunters for the

679
00:37:30,400 --> 00:37:30,879
Speaker 7: most part.

680
00:37:30,920 --> 00:37:34,640
Speaker 10: They they're moving their daytime and so we think in

681
00:37:34,960 --> 00:37:37,600
Speaker 10: the US we think of venomous snakes as having that

682
00:37:37,640 --> 00:37:42,200
Speaker 10: sweet pupil eyes. That's just a nocturnal trait, right, So

683
00:37:42,239 --> 00:37:45,320
Speaker 10: when you see a snake with round pupils, that generally

684
00:37:45,360 --> 00:37:48,880
Speaker 10: means their daytime hunters. So you'll see racers and coach

685
00:37:48,920 --> 00:37:49,960
Speaker 10: whips and rat.

686
00:37:49,800 --> 00:37:50,480
Speaker 7: Snakes out of that.

687
00:37:50,520 --> 00:37:52,320
Speaker 4: Does it mean that it's venomous?

688
00:37:52,360 --> 00:37:52,799
Speaker 7: Not at all.

689
00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:56,000
Speaker 3: But it just happens that our venomous snakes are nighttime hunters,

690
00:37:56,120 --> 00:37:57,080
Speaker 3: so we have we can.

691
00:37:57,000 --> 00:37:59,400
Speaker 4: Teach our kids. If it's got slats.

692
00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:02,719
Speaker 11: In his eyes, it's venoms here in many states, yes,

693
00:38:02,760 --> 00:38:05,000
Speaker 11: but you get further south, even in the US, and

694
00:38:05,080 --> 00:38:10,520
Speaker 11: you can you can get round pupiled venomous snakes right absolutely.

695
00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:14,480
Speaker 4: And my whole world was just a house of cards.

696
00:38:15,920 --> 00:38:18,839
Speaker 4: So one of my children are alive today after all

697
00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:19,719
Speaker 4: that I've taught.

698
00:38:19,520 --> 00:38:25,920
Speaker 7: Them well, and you I apologize for insulting your parenting skills.

699
00:38:27,360 --> 00:38:30,440
Speaker 3: That's some good info on Cobra's doctor Jansen, did you

700
00:38:30,480 --> 00:38:33,640
Speaker 3: hear that round eyes don't always mean non venomous and

701
00:38:33,760 --> 00:38:35,880
Speaker 3: slit eyes don't always mean venomous.

702
00:38:36,480 --> 00:38:37,239
Speaker 4: That's news to me.

703
00:38:38,080 --> 00:38:41,000
Speaker 3: But I want to get into a more philosophical question

704
00:38:41,120 --> 00:38:43,080
Speaker 3: of why any of this matters?

705
00:38:43,719 --> 00:38:46,840
Speaker 4: Why do we remember unique and wild.

706
00:38:46,640 --> 00:38:50,640
Speaker 3: Stories and this whole Cobra scarre nobody was bitten, yet

707
00:38:50,680 --> 00:38:53,920
Speaker 3: seventy years later, we're still talking about it. In Springfield

708
00:38:54,040 --> 00:38:56,680
Speaker 3: seems to be pretty proud of the great Cobra Scare.

709
00:38:57,200 --> 00:39:02,200
Speaker 3: Here's Kyle and I talking it over. I'm still searching

710
00:39:02,400 --> 00:39:08,160
Speaker 3: for the real concrete answer of why this stuff is important,

711
00:39:08,640 --> 00:39:11,160
Speaker 3: because me and you both agree that it is. But

712
00:39:11,680 --> 00:39:15,279
Speaker 3: I feel like people are always looking for identity, and

713
00:39:15,480 --> 00:39:20,880
Speaker 3: identity comes from differentiation, Like in this mass of people,

714
00:39:21,280 --> 00:39:25,200
Speaker 3: really it's our differences and in some way, and that

715
00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:28,279
Speaker 3: might sound divisive, but in this way, I think it's

716
00:39:28,280 --> 00:39:31,120
Speaker 3: a positive thing. It's not divisive, But it's the things

717
00:39:31,120 --> 00:39:33,640
Speaker 3: that make us different that sometimes are like, hey, this

718
00:39:33,719 --> 00:39:36,839
Speaker 3: is who we are because nobody else has this thing.

719
00:39:37,360 --> 00:39:40,920
Speaker 3: So maybe these little obscure stories which probably could be

720
00:39:40,960 --> 00:39:46,360
Speaker 3: scaled down from like nations to states, to cities, to

721
00:39:46,680 --> 00:39:52,520
Speaker 3: neighborhoods to families, we all have these unique stories that,

722
00:39:52,719 --> 00:39:55,879
Speaker 3: like you said, are truly yours and no one else

723
00:39:55,920 --> 00:39:58,200
Speaker 3: has it. Like no one else in America has a

724
00:39:58,239 --> 00:40:00,279
Speaker 3: regional Cobra scare it.

725
00:40:00,360 --> 00:40:01,560
Speaker 8: It's absolutely that.

726
00:40:01,680 --> 00:40:06,319
Speaker 2: But again, like it's not really like the visit, it's

727
00:40:06,400 --> 00:40:10,040
Speaker 2: just yeah, neatness, right, It's just like, oh, this is ours. Hi,

728
00:40:10,160 --> 00:40:14,240
Speaker 2: we're Springfield, Missouri, and I mean we don't have something

729
00:40:14,360 --> 00:40:15,760
Speaker 2: like Niagara Falls.

730
00:40:17,040 --> 00:40:20,680
Speaker 3: Kyle and Mother's Brewery did something special in twenty seventeen

731
00:40:20,960 --> 00:40:24,279
Speaker 3: when they were naming one of their brews. I'll give

732
00:40:24,320 --> 00:40:26,040
Speaker 3: you one guess what they named it.

733
00:40:26,840 --> 00:40:30,040
Speaker 2: When you're a brewery in the Ozarks and you want

734
00:40:30,040 --> 00:40:35,719
Speaker 2: to claim Erosark heritage, the natural choice is we love

735
00:40:35,760 --> 00:40:39,560
Speaker 2: our mountains, we love our streams, our lakes, we like hiking,

736
00:40:39,840 --> 00:40:43,680
Speaker 2: we like canoeing, floating, all of these things. But we

737
00:40:43,760 --> 00:40:46,960
Speaker 2: wanted something a little different. It was just kind of

738
00:40:47,040 --> 00:40:50,400
Speaker 2: like this deep dive into who we were as a

739
00:40:50,440 --> 00:40:54,000
Speaker 2: Springfield brewery and who Springfield is. And I remember us

740
00:40:54,040 --> 00:40:56,920
Speaker 2: just all sitting around and brainstorming on it, and we

741
00:40:56,920 --> 00:40:59,759
Speaker 2: were just like, what's something that's just so Springfield that

742
00:41:00,160 --> 00:41:03,920
Speaker 2: nobody else can claim it? And I think it was David,

743
00:41:04,160 --> 00:41:06,799
Speaker 2: our head brewer at the time, who was like the

744
00:41:06,840 --> 00:41:11,120
Speaker 2: Cobra scare man, and it just hit us. We were like,

745
00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:15,680
Speaker 2: nobody else can claim this, this is purely Springfield. And

746
00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:21,280
Speaker 2: part of the thinking on our end is every town

747
00:41:21,840 --> 00:41:27,120
Speaker 2: has something like this that's uniquely their own. Anywhere you go,

748
00:41:27,400 --> 00:41:30,760
Speaker 2: you talk to somebody from this small town, they've got

749
00:41:30,800 --> 00:41:33,920
Speaker 2: something that belongs to that town and nobody else.

750
00:41:34,400 --> 00:41:38,640
Speaker 8: And so this idea of like lore, this kind.

751
00:41:38,400 --> 00:41:42,280
Speaker 2: Of like common history, where your town's story is unique.

752
00:41:42,600 --> 00:41:44,960
Speaker 2: But we all have those stories to.

753
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:45,719
Speaker 8: Share with each other.

754
00:41:45,880 --> 00:41:49,839
Speaker 2: That's why we chose the Cobra Scare. That's what we

755
00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:50,799
Speaker 2: wanted to like.

756
00:41:51,160 --> 00:41:56,200
Speaker 3: Honor Kyle and the brewery have tapped into this idea

757
00:41:56,239 --> 00:41:59,560
Speaker 3: of regional identity. I think this stuff is pretty important,

758
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:04,080
Speaker 3: especially for people who are prone to be connected to place.

759
00:42:04,680 --> 00:42:07,440
Speaker 3: I find that some people are and some people aren't

760
00:42:07,480 --> 00:42:12,239
Speaker 3: as much. What happened that's unique in your town? Tell

761
00:42:12,280 --> 00:42:15,239
Speaker 3: me about it. I think that's a pretty unique name

762
00:42:15,280 --> 00:42:17,480
Speaker 3: for a drink, too, Cobra scare.

763
00:42:17,760 --> 00:42:19,120
Speaker 4: That just has a ring to it.

764
00:42:19,120 --> 00:42:22,480
Speaker 3: It's hard to deny, but you know what, Springfield is

765
00:42:22,480 --> 00:42:23,520
Speaker 3: a pretty unique town.

766
00:42:24,080 --> 00:42:25,160
Speaker 4: But just in the.

767
00:42:25,160 --> 00:42:29,040
Speaker 3: Last three years, I've come to learn that Springfield is

768
00:42:29,160 --> 00:42:34,160
Speaker 3: known as the Queen City of the Ozarks, which came

769
00:42:34,280 --> 00:42:37,439
Speaker 3: to me as a complete shock. As you know, I'm

770
00:42:37,440 --> 00:42:41,920
Speaker 3: from the southern Ozarks. I mean, how is this even regulated?

771
00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:47,000
Speaker 3: Who approved this name being in Missouri? Maybe I'm just

772
00:42:47,040 --> 00:42:50,879
Speaker 3: a little jealous. I need some help understanding this from John.

773
00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:56,239
Speaker 3: Can you tell me why it's the Queen city and

774
00:42:56,400 --> 00:42:57,600
Speaker 3: quantify that for me?

775
00:42:57,840 --> 00:43:04,719
Speaker 5: Sure, calling something the Queen city of wherever was aggrandizing appellation,

776
00:43:05,040 --> 00:43:08,000
Speaker 5: something that you added to the name there's queen cities

777
00:43:08,040 --> 00:43:11,839
Speaker 5: all over the country. There's Queen City of the Ohio Valley,

778
00:43:11,840 --> 00:43:14,120
Speaker 5: and there's a Queen City of New England. There's a

779
00:43:14,200 --> 00:43:15,840
Speaker 5: Queen City of this and the Queen City of that

780
00:43:15,880 --> 00:43:19,200
Speaker 5: Queen city. These all started in the late eighteen hundreds,

781
00:43:19,320 --> 00:43:24,640
Speaker 5: and ours came about at a speech celebrating the centennial

782
00:43:24,880 --> 00:43:28,160
Speaker 5: of our country in eighteen seventy six given man man

783
00:43:28,239 --> 00:43:32,000
Speaker 5: named Simpronius Boyd Pony Boyd. He was actually the judge

784
00:43:32,040 --> 00:43:34,520
Speaker 5: at the trial when wild Bolt Hiccock was tried for

785
00:43:34,560 --> 00:43:37,880
Speaker 5: the shooting on the squad. But Simpronius Boyds was speaking

786
00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:41,719
Speaker 5: at Dry University Dury College at that time about the

787
00:43:41,760 --> 00:43:44,520
Speaker 5: centennial at a big celebration, and he called it the

788
00:43:44,680 --> 00:43:47,759
Speaker 5: Queen City of the Ozarks. He just dubbed it, just

789
00:43:47,840 --> 00:43:50,600
Speaker 5: dubbed it that, and so from that point forward it

790
00:43:50,719 --> 00:43:52,680
Speaker 5: was used from time to time and time to time

791
00:43:52,760 --> 00:43:55,279
Speaker 5: until finally, by the turn of the twentieth century it

792
00:43:55,400 --> 00:43:57,000
Speaker 5: was pretty much a given that.

793
00:43:57,320 --> 00:44:02,800
Speaker 3: So it just was adopted rightly nationally. Springfield is the

794
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:03,439
Speaker 3: queen city.

795
00:44:03,680 --> 00:44:06,120
Speaker 5: We were, as I said, we were a transportation hub.

796
00:44:06,600 --> 00:44:10,239
Speaker 5: The Butterfield stage line came through here, the railroads came

797
00:44:10,280 --> 00:44:12,880
Speaker 5: through here. This was the crossroads of five different Native

798
00:44:12,880 --> 00:44:16,840
Speaker 5: American trails. We were the stepping off point into the

799
00:44:16,880 --> 00:44:17,440
Speaker 5: Old West.

800
00:44:17,800 --> 00:44:20,960
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm still trying to understand a little bit about this.

801
00:44:21,440 --> 00:44:27,560
Speaker 4: Very interested in cities getting these wonderful, wonderful accolades. Yeah,

802
00:44:27,600 --> 00:44:28,840
Speaker 4: are there king cities?

803
00:44:29,320 --> 00:44:32,560
Speaker 5: No, I've never seen a king city like Cincinnati's Queen

804
00:44:32,640 --> 00:44:33,800
Speaker 5: City of the Ohio Valley.

805
00:44:34,120 --> 00:44:35,880
Speaker 4: Okay, they're king cities.

806
00:44:36,480 --> 00:44:39,120
Speaker 3: So you think I could if I made a public

807
00:44:39,160 --> 00:44:42,680
Speaker 3: speech like down where I'm from, if I just said

808
00:44:43,000 --> 00:44:46,880
Speaker 3: I dub such and such Arkansas the king City of

809
00:44:46,920 --> 00:44:48,919
Speaker 3: the Ozarks, that potentially it would stick.

810
00:44:49,040 --> 00:44:51,240
Speaker 5: Somebody will look at you and go, you've hit your head.

811
00:44:57,760 --> 00:45:01,000
Speaker 3: I think it's clear that regionalalied did D is earned

812
00:45:01,400 --> 00:45:05,080
Speaker 3: and not just the fruit of self serving ambitions. I

813
00:45:05,080 --> 00:45:09,840
Speaker 3: think the Cobra Scare validates the queen's city name of Springfield,

814
00:45:10,400 --> 00:45:13,920
Speaker 3: though it happened seventy five years after mister Simpronius Boyd

815
00:45:13,920 --> 00:45:18,000
Speaker 3: called it the queen city. Think this validates Springfield's queenship.

816
00:45:18,520 --> 00:45:23,120
Speaker 3: But hey, long live the remembrance of the Great Cobra

817
00:45:23,239 --> 00:45:30,600
Speaker 3: Scare of nineteen fifty three. I can't thank you enough

818
00:45:30,600 --> 00:45:33,360
Speaker 3: for listening to Bear Grease, Please leave us a review

819
00:45:33,400 --> 00:45:37,759
Speaker 3: on iTunes and tell your friends about the wild stories

820
00:45:37,880 --> 00:45:53,239
Speaker 3: you're hearing on Bear Grease in this country life