WEBVTT - Ep. 206: Cobra Scare 0:00:05.440 --> 0:00:05.920 Here it is. 0:00:05.960 --> 0:00:08.520 It's the last month of summer vacation for all these 0:00:08.560 --> 0:00:11.200 school children, and they're not allowed to enjoy it because 0:00:11.240 --> 0:00:14.000 you don't know when you're going to get tacked and 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:16.320 bitten by an Indian cobra. 0:00:17.840 --> 0:00:22.600 Every corner of this planet has wild animals that are revered, feared, 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:29.240 and sensationalized, deadly scorpions, killer bees, piranhas giant crocodiles, to 0:00:29.360 --> 0:00:30.440 African lions. 0:00:31.120 --> 0:00:32.760 However, the cultures. 0:00:32.280 --> 0:00:35.120 Of where these beasts exist help the people to know 0:00:35.159 --> 0:00:38.360 how to deal and live with them. But what if 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:41.760 one of them was transplanted to where you lived, maybe 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:45.839 even right in Middle America? And what if that beast 0:00:46.080 --> 0:00:50.199 was one of the world's top wildlife villains, the global 0:00:50.320 --> 0:00:54.680 bad boy, the Cobra. I want to tell you about 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:59.200 the Great Cobra Scare of nineteen fifty three, A story of. 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:01.440 Fear, fangs, and. 0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:06.000 Lies, but it all ties back into the unique identity 0:01:06.080 --> 0:01:10.360 of a quaint Midwestern town. I really doubt that you're 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:11.559 going to want to miss this one. 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:13.800 This is the article of the two page article in 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:18.319 Life magazine. Here's a postcard new home of Cobra's Hey, 0:01:18.640 --> 0:01:21.360 the durn Woods is full of them and says exclusive, 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:25.520 try our new cobra haircut. It's daring and deadly, but 0:01:25.640 --> 0:01:28.559 it'll go with the new fall fashions at Hester's Beauty 0:01:28.560 --> 0:01:29.520 Salon on Saint Louis. 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:31.840 Wow the cobra haircut. 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:43.520 My name is Clay Nukem and this is the Bear 0:01:43.600 --> 0:01:48.560 Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:52.320 for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the 0:01:52.360 --> 0:01:56.480 story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. 0:01:57.160 --> 0:02:02.840 Presented by FHF Gear American Maid, purpose built hunting and 0:02:02.920 --> 0:02:06.280 fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged. 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:17.359 As the place as we explore. I just pulled over 0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:21.840 to my neighbor's house, Fred Lowly. He's a He's got 0:02:21.880 --> 0:02:22.720 a trailer. 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:28.120 In his front yard that says Lollly's oddity show venomous snakes. 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:38.640 Walking up to his door. Hey, mister Fred, how are 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:39.040 you doing. 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:39.959 I'm doing good. 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:42.160 I'm doing good. Good to see you. 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:47.080 As the crow flies. I'm less than two miles from 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:51.080 my house in the Ozarks of Arkansas. Mister Fred is 0:02:51.080 --> 0:02:55.919 eighty two years old, wiry, witty, and seemingly imperfect health. 0:02:56.440 --> 0:02:59.440 He's got shoulder linked white hair and he's been bitten 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:02.880 by overt any venomous snakes. He's a real piece of work. 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:08.120 I'm here to talk about cobra's What do you got? Well, 0:03:08.240 --> 0:03:09.840 I'm recording, is that okay? 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:10.120 Oh? 0:03:10.200 --> 0:03:10.399 Yeah? 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:10.639 Yeah? 0:03:11.560 --> 0:03:14.600 Thing I didn't know exactly. He wanted some information on cobra. 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:15.480 Yeah. 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:19.520 You ever heard of William Hast Bill Hass Miami Serpentarium. No, 0:03:19.680 --> 0:03:21.960 he did, but he lived to be about one hundred. 0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:24.959 He's been bitting a couple of hundred times, probably about 0:03:24.960 --> 0:03:27.360 different things. Even a king cobra lived through it. 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:30.200 Really, you've you've been bit by a cobra. 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:33.160 Yeah, but it was a much It wasn't a king kobra. 0:03:33.200 --> 0:03:37.000 It was a African band of Egypsian cobra. 0:03:38.080 --> 0:03:41.240 And I think that doesn't exactly sound like like a 0:03:41.240 --> 0:03:42.400 good one to get bit by. 0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:46.320 Oh it's not, I too. What it got a good 0:03:46.400 --> 0:03:49.600 solid grip on me right along and here I'm showing 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:54.040 my index finger and held on and was chewing. And 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:55.960 that's what they do, is they chew their v elemental 0:03:56.480 --> 0:03:58.520 They don't know. Yeah, it's not like a rattle snake. 0:03:58.800 --> 0:04:00.160 They pop and they're gone. 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:01.720 It's done like a rattler was. 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:05.440 Yeah, yeah, cobra's grab a hole, chew it in. They've 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:08.720 got shorter things, real starry thing and king cobras have 0:04:08.760 --> 0:04:12.480 a really big one and they've been known to kill elephants. 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:14.440 It's so mad, you know what I mean. 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:21.240 Cobras are no doubt the global bad boys of serpents. 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:25.360 The king cobra, native to northern India and southern China, 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:28.679 is considered by some to be the most venomous snake 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:31.679 in the world, and they can get over fifteen feet long. 0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:36.000 Mister Fred was bitten by a banded Egyptian cobra, not 0:04:36.120 --> 0:04:38.760 as venomous as the king cobra, but that was in 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:41.599 nineteen ninety two while he was touring with a snake 0:04:41.720 --> 0:04:46.240 display at a carnival in Clarksville, Tennessee. Cobra was his pet. 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:50.080 But why are we talking about cobras? I get the 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:52.240 willies when I see one of those suckers, and I 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:56.279 love snakes. But then again, in the West, the evil 0:04:56.360 --> 0:05:00.359 nature of cobra's has been marketed to us hard for 0:05:00.400 --> 0:05:03.320 the last fifty years. I'd even say that my generation 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:07.640 received the brunt of that marketing. Aside from the biological 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:11.760 fangs and venom, their symbols of villainous evil, and depending 0:05:11.839 --> 0:05:15.279 upon how old you are, you'll remember the terrorist Cobra 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:18.760 organization of the g I. Joe World, And in nineteen 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:22.359 eighty one, Indiana Jones faced off with a monocled cobra 0:05:22.480 --> 0:05:25.640 in Raiders of the Lost Arc. In nineteen eighty six, 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:29.760 Sylvester Stallone wrote and produced a movie called Cobra. But 0:05:30.520 --> 0:05:36.120 the cobra Kidjoe from Karate Kid was the epitome of evil. 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:38.640 Those guys were bad news. 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:46.640 What is that way? 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:48.640 I can't hear you. 0:05:54.920 --> 0:05:58.360 Cobras are clearly symbols of evil, but they've come by 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:03.159 their reputation honestly. The World Health Organization reports as many 0:06:03.200 --> 0:06:07.919 as two point seven million people are envenomed by snakes 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:11.400 each year. Some are bitten by venom of snakes but 0:06:11.560 --> 0:06:15.160 not envenomed, but up to four hundred thousand people are 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:20.280 permanently disabled, like having amputations. In eighty one to one 0:06:20.400 --> 0:06:25.800 hundred and thirty eight thousand people die globally from snake 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:30.360 bites each year. Granted, not all of these are cobras, 0:06:30.680 --> 0:06:33.839 but there's certainly big players in Africa in Asia. 0:06:34.640 --> 0:06:38.640 But what do cobras have to do with America? 0:06:39.400 --> 0:06:42.160 And what do they have to do with the midwestern 0:06:42.240 --> 0:06:45.080 town of Springfield, Missouri. 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:49.320 Okay, so show me what you got. 0:06:49.279 --> 0:06:51.440 Here, all right? So what I did. I went through 0:06:51.480 --> 0:06:54.400 our archives and just put in the word cobra. And 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:57.279 this is some of the things that popped up during 0:06:57.320 --> 0:07:01.080 that time of the after the cobras got They actually 0:07:01.120 --> 0:07:05.480 added a cobra's snake to the city of Springfield seal. Wow, 0:07:05.520 --> 0:07:07.840 so it circles around the shield that's in the middle 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:08.360 of the seal. 0:07:08.640 --> 0:07:10.000 What year did they do that? 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:13.400 They did it in fifty four. That next year after. 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:16.000 That, they put a cobra on the seal of a 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:20.560 town in the Ozark Yeah. Yeah, did he just say 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:24.000 cobra scare and that his town has a cobra on 0:07:24.040 --> 0:07:24.720 their seal. 0:07:25.840 --> 0:07:26.440 Yeah. 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:30.320 I'm in downtown Springfield, Missouri, at the History Museum on 0:07:30.400 --> 0:07:34.920 the Square, eight thousand miles away from the cobra's native 0:07:34.960 --> 0:07:39.520 home range. This place feels like the Missouri Smithsonian sacred 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:42.480 ground for the Show Me State. And I'm speaking with 0:07:42.520 --> 0:07:46.920 the president Emeritus, John Steller. He's a good sized man 0:07:47.080 --> 0:07:50.440 wearing a gray sweatshirt with the collar of a polo visible. 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:54.000 His white mustache is well trimmed, and he's got a 0:07:54.080 --> 0:07:58.800 tidy office. I'm looking over his shoulder onto his computer screen. 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:03.600 Some thing in this city happened involving cobras. 0:08:03.960 --> 0:08:04.640 That's all I know. 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:09.520 But here's a here's a postcard from Springfields. There a 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:12.880 new home of cobras. The Drm Woods is full of 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:13.160 them and. 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:16.480 Says this is like a hillbilly Yeah, like Ozark hillbilly. 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:16.920 Yeah. 0:08:17.000 --> 0:08:20.800 And they and even local businesses got involved. They wanted 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:24.560 to do ads and so on. So there was advertising 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:27.600 in the magazines and all sorts of stuff. Here's a 0:08:28.240 --> 0:08:31.680 during that time exclusive, Try our new cobra haircut. It's 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:35.560 daring and deadly, but it'll go with the new fall fashions. 0:08:35.559 --> 0:08:37.480 That Hester's beauty salon on Saint Louis. 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:37.880 Wow. 0:08:37.960 --> 0:08:41.960 The cobra haircut here in Springfield. Wow. 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:46.440 So here's the big time. This is uh. This is 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:49.840 the article of the two page article in Life magazine about. 0:08:49.960 --> 0:08:52.360 This was in the national Yeah, in the. 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:54.720 Life magazine, which would be like being on national news. 0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:58.079 Now, okay, here's the scoop. 0:08:59.160 --> 0:09:03.280 In the late summer of nineteen fifty three, multiple Indian 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:07.160 monocled cobras were killed in the city limits of Springfield. 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:10.840 The incident became known as the Great Cobra Scare of 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:16.760 nineteen fifty three. Wild Springfield is a railroad town in 0:09:16.800 --> 0:09:20.679 southwest Missouri. Has a population of one hundred and seventy thousand. 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:24.240 Wild Bill Hiccock killed a guy named Cut on the 0:09:24.240 --> 0:09:27.720 Springfield Square in eighteen sixty five, and it's the hometown 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:31.640 of Brad Pitt. It's not entirely relevant, but it's important 0:09:31.640 --> 0:09:35.800 to note that Missouri is officially the Midwest, even though 0:09:35.920 --> 0:09:39.160 the southern one third of Missouri is the Ozarks, and 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:42.680 where I live in Arkansas, which is also the Ozarks, 0:09:43.080 --> 0:09:48.200 is considered the South. Just some clarity. I'm now headed 0:09:48.200 --> 0:09:52.480 to Mother's Brewery and Springfield to talk with Kyle Jeffreys. 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:56.880 He's the liaison of the brewery. He's got bushy salt 0:09:56.920 --> 0:09:59.560 and pepper hair and sideburns down to the middle of 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:02.880 his chi weeks. He's gonna start to tell us what's up. 0:10:03.160 --> 0:10:05.200 We're going back to nineteen fifty three. 0:10:06.800 --> 0:10:07.280 Dwight D. 0:10:07.480 --> 0:10:11.080 Eisenhower has just been sworn as president, the Korean War 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:14.720 has ended, and Elvis Presley will begin his music career 0:10:14.920 --> 0:10:17.280 A year later in nineteen fifty four. 0:10:18.400 --> 0:10:25.319 Essentially, It is just standard summer in small city, big 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:29.320 town Springfield, Missouri in the Ozarks. The year is nineteen 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:34.480 fifty three. Everybody's just doing their regular thing. And there's 0:10:34.600 --> 0:10:39.480 a couple and they're sitting on their porch one August afternoon. 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:41.160 And they see a snake go past. 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:45.240 And obviously that's not too much cause for alarm for 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:51.280 anybody in the Ozarks, except they noticed it was larger 0:10:51.320 --> 0:10:53.280 than the snakes they were used to seeing, and it 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:56.160 just didn't look like I mean, it wasn't a garter snake, 0:10:56.320 --> 0:10:58.640 it wasn't a black rat snake. And so they got 0:10:58.679 --> 0:11:03.520 curious and they cornered it, and they were really concerned 0:11:03.559 --> 0:11:05.600 because they didn't know it was so they killed it. 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:08.559 They took a garden hole and they just whacked it. 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:11.040 And then they got really curious because they were like, 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:13.559 I don't So they took it to Dickerson Park Zoo, 0:11:14.160 --> 0:11:17.080 the small little zoo here in Springfield, and they were like, 0:11:17.400 --> 0:11:23.160 what is this And the official of the zoo is alarmed. 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:28.000 They're like, this is an Indian cobra. This is they're 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:30.000 not native to this continent. 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:34.800 And too they are deadly, quite venomous, and this is 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:38.600 an anomaly, and so at this point it's not anything 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:41.800 that becomes part of like public alarm or public concern, 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:48.360 but it is puzzling until another one is found and killed. 0:11:49.000 --> 0:11:54.000 And at this point you have two Indian cobras in Springfield, Missouri. 0:11:54.480 --> 0:11:56.720 At this point, now it starts to get some public 0:11:56.760 --> 0:12:01.800 acknowledgement and people start to become except over the course 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:04.559 of the next six weeks, they're going to end up 0:12:04.679 --> 0:12:09.880 killing eleven of these cobras. 0:12:09.800 --> 0:12:14.000 Indian cobras in Middle America. And Kyle was right. They 0:12:14.120 --> 0:12:17.240 killed eleven, but they also caught one alive, making the 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:21.760 grand total of twelve of these global bad boys in Springfield. 0:12:22.440 --> 0:12:23.040 Here's John. 0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:27.520 It actually started in August when the first snakes started 0:12:27.520 --> 0:12:30.040 to appear, and they were odd snakes. Nobody knew what 0:12:30.040 --> 0:12:33.440 they were. These snakes would raise up and like raise 0:12:33.559 --> 0:12:36.520 up high out of the grass and strike at you. 0:12:37.360 --> 0:12:39.600 And they'd never seen snakes like that before. 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:44.840 And this was probably before the cobra was really famous 0:12:44.880 --> 0:12:45.400 in America. 0:12:45.520 --> 0:12:48.320 Yeah, my goodness, Yeah, I mean and then night did 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:50.640 you know you didn't, We didn't. We had just gotten 0:12:50.640 --> 0:12:53.880 our first TV station that spring, Channel ten came on 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:56.240 the air in the spring of fifty three, so we 0:12:56.280 --> 0:12:59.120 had one TV station and it was only on part 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:00.199 of the time, so. 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:03.560 People might have only heard of Cobra as maybe any. 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:06.119 Been a movie or something like that, and not everybody, 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:09.000 you know, not everybody was involved in that. They knew 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:12.360 about snakes, but they didn't know about cobs. It's from, 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:16.360 you know, the far East, and so they couldn't figure 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:19.480 out why it was here. But they suspected rail Mauer 0:13:19.720 --> 0:13:22.880 because of his dealing and all these odd animals, and 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:25.000 it was like a block from his house. So it 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:27.200 was right there at the corner of National and Saint 0:13:27.240 --> 0:13:27.720 Louis Street. 0:13:29.600 --> 0:13:32.400 John just introduced the man with a smoking gun in 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:37.120 his hand, Rao Maur. These snakes were turning up close 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:39.000 to this guy's house and business. 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:43.440 Rail Mauer had a pet shop in the sixteen hundred 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:46.320 block of Saint Louis Street and in a house, just 0:13:46.360 --> 0:13:49.920 in a house. But he was he was not very 0:13:49.920 --> 0:13:53.000 disciplined in how he took care of his animals. They 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:55.599 just kind of ran wild. I mean there was chimpanzees 0:13:55.679 --> 0:13:59.439 running around biting people, and there was two cans flying 0:13:59.520 --> 0:14:02.760 and there was stuff everywhere. But he did a lot 0:14:02.760 --> 0:14:06.360 of dealing with the local kids kids would catch garter 0:14:06.520 --> 0:14:08.640 snakes and stuff like that and bring him to him 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:10.559 and trade him for tropical fish. He did a lot 0:14:10.600 --> 0:14:14.079 of trading with the little kids around and so he 0:14:14.160 --> 0:14:18.240 was well known in the neighborhood up there, but nobody 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:21.240 knew that he had anything, you know, really really dangerous. 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:25.920 On August fifteenth, the first snake was killed, and it 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:28.800 was also brought to rail Maur to help identify it 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:32.000 and to see if it was his, but he denied 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:34.360 that it was a cobra and denied that it was his. 0:14:34.840 --> 0:14:37.400 He said it was a native snake with abnormal markings, 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:42.600 but others I did it as nausea kwafia. The monocled 0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:47.080 cobra or the Indian cobra. Monocled means that it has 0:14:47.280 --> 0:14:51.000 one circle on the back of its head. A week later, 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:53.960 on August twenty second, at fourteen twenty one East Olive, 0:14:54.000 --> 0:14:56.280 a four foot cobra was killed with a hoe. 0:14:56.920 --> 0:14:58.280 He was taken to the local high. 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:02.080 School science teacher, who confirmed it was an Indian monicle cobra. 0:15:02.480 --> 0:15:05.520 The second one in a week on August thirty first, 0:15:05.600 --> 0:15:08.720 Cobra number three is run over by a car. On 0:15:08.760 --> 0:15:12.480 September third, a city in Florida ships one dose of 0:15:12.680 --> 0:15:16.880 antivenom to the hospital in Springfield. On September eighth, some 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:21.120 kids find cobra number four in their yard. September ninth, 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:24.760 Number five is killed. On September tenth, police do a 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:29.160 full search of rail Maer's pet shop, and snake graffiti 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:32.400 starts to show up around the town as the city 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:37.440 goes into lockdown. Things have gotten completely out of hand. 0:15:38.080 --> 0:15:38.720 Here's Kyle. 0:15:40.320 --> 0:15:44.160 I've met people who lived through it and they talk it. 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:48.280 They were like, it ruined my summer vacation because your 0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:50.240 parents wouldn't let you go outside and play. 0:15:50.720 --> 0:15:51.200 Here it is. 0:15:51.240 --> 0:15:53.800 It's the last month of summer vacation for all these 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:56.360 school children in Springfield, and they're not allowed to enjoy 0:15:56.400 --> 0:15:58.680 it because you don't know when you're going to get 0:15:59.200 --> 0:16:02.240 tacked bitten by an Indian cobra. 0:16:03.720 --> 0:16:06.200 Wouldn't it be cool to talk to someone who lived 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:13.160 through the cobra scare? I may know a guy, Oh 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:16.240 I was, I was here. 0:16:16.400 --> 0:16:19.560 Yeah, I grew up four blocks from where this all happened. 0:16:20.280 --> 0:16:23.840 And my parents, my mother especially just knew that the 0:16:23.880 --> 0:16:26.200 cobras were coming to get her children. And it was 0:16:26.240 --> 0:16:29.320 the hottest it's the hottest summer on record in Springfield, 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:31.640 and it had gotten up to one hundred and thirteen 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:33.600 here that year. But we were locked up in the 0:16:33.600 --> 0:16:36.000 house and no air conditioning, locked up in the house, 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:40.040 windows down door shut because we weren't letting snakes get in. 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:43.680 So it was Yeah, there's not much that I don't 0:16:43.720 --> 0:16:47.920 remember about that summer in nineteen fifty three. I was little, 0:16:47.960 --> 0:16:51.720 but I still, I still. I was born forty nine, 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:54.120 I was four years old, and I still remembered. It 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:56.120 was one of my earliest memories. 0:16:57.240 --> 0:16:59.960 By the middle of September, things are spinning out of control. 0:17:00.720 --> 0:17:04.000 A man named LH. Stockton chunked a rock at Cobra 0:17:04.080 --> 0:17:06.479 number six before it went under his house. 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:08.320 Then police used tear. 0:17:08.119 --> 0:17:11.760 Gas to smoke it out, dispatching it with their pistols 0:17:11.760 --> 0:17:14.560 when it tried to escape in the man's yard. On 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:18.800 September eleventh, Vigilantis threatened to burn down the pet shop 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:23.440 and Springfield police guard rail Maoer's house. He still claims 0:17:23.480 --> 0:17:27.040 his innocence, offering to help the city catch the cobras. 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:30.680 By now, the Cobra scare is starting to get international attention. 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:35.280 On September seventeenth, Cobra number seven is run over on 0:17:35.359 --> 0:17:39.080 Saint Louis Street and Cobra number eight was killed by 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:40.040 bird dog. 0:17:40.760 --> 0:17:44.720 The city is spinning out of control. Here's Kyle. 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:49.480 So at that point, Springfield had just instituted in the 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:53.080 municipal government a position called city manager. The first guy 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:56.960 to hold that. He was the first city manager. Basically 0:17:57.080 --> 0:18:00.240 everybody turns to him and like, all right, city manager, 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:04.200 what are you talking about this? And nobody has any 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:07.760 idea what to do about it? What can you do 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:10.800 about it? Nobody even knows where it's coming from, nobody 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:12.560 knows how many they're going to. 0:18:12.560 --> 0:18:17.520 Be, you know, inexperienced. As they were city health head 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:20.720 of the health department. They began to try to come 0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:23.760 up with ways to capture these snakes, and they came 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:25.680 up with an idea. They said, well, you know, we've 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:29.240 seen movies of snake charmers and they're playing these flutes 0:18:29.280 --> 0:18:31.159 and there, and the snake comes up out of the 0:18:31.160 --> 0:18:34.679 basket and the whole thing. So they think those snakes 0:18:34.760 --> 0:18:38.240 must like that music. So they got a truck with 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:42.479 a big speaker on the roof wow, and drove it 0:18:42.640 --> 0:18:46.440 slowly around town with a big group of guys with 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:50.520 hose and shovels and picks and stuff behind it driving. 0:18:50.880 --> 0:18:52.840 This isn't a joke, no playing. 0:18:53.040 --> 0:18:55.480 So we're looking at a photograph, a black and white 0:18:55.480 --> 0:18:59.160 photograph of a what make of vehicles? 0:18:59.760 --> 0:19:02.359 That's a Ford, that's Afford Sedan, what they called the 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:03.320 Sedan Delivery. 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:06.160 It was like a big like a classic old style 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:07.680 Nights and he's got these. 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:10.760 Two big, huge speakers on the roof, and they're driving 0:19:10.800 --> 0:19:13.720 around and there's probably forty guys here behind it, all 0:19:13.760 --> 0:19:17.040 this big group of people policemen out here, and it's 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:19.960 in behind the plumbing place at the corner of Saint 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:23.359 Louis and Glenstone. But they had took this car, this truck, 0:19:23.640 --> 0:19:27.320 and they played snake charmer music while all these people 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:30.720 with farm implements followed behind it walking down the street, 0:19:31.200 --> 0:19:34.680 expecting that the snakes would hear this music and come 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:39.760 slithering out to their doom. Snakes don't hear. Snakes sense vibrations, 0:19:39.760 --> 0:19:43.320 sakes sense smell, but snakes do not hear. And the 0:19:43.480 --> 0:19:47.560 music is for the snake charmer because he moves rhythmically 0:19:47.640 --> 0:19:50.520 to the music, and the snake is fascinated by the 0:19:50.600 --> 0:19:54.119 rhythmic movement and has nothing to do with the music. 0:19:54.240 --> 0:19:56.480 It has to do with the movement of the snake charmer. 0:19:56.960 --> 0:19:59.879 That the snakes would hear this music and come slither 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:01.080 out to their dune. 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:03.040 It. 0:20:03.080 --> 0:20:04.880 But they tried it continuously. 0:20:04.920 --> 0:20:05.280 Wow. 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:07.919 Just driving like four or five miles an hour around 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:12.719 downtown with this big mob of people behind it, all 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:16.080 at the ready for snakes to come slithering out into 0:20:16.119 --> 0:20:16.560 the street. 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:17.040 Wow. 0:20:17.119 --> 0:20:19.320 I mean they tried, They tried everything. 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:24.280 This is almost unbelievable, but it's true. You ought to 0:20:24.320 --> 0:20:26.960 see the photos. I'll probably post some of those on 0:20:27.000 --> 0:20:31.360 my Instagram. But we need to learn first about snake charmers. 0:20:32.119 --> 0:20:36.439 Modern snake charming most likely originated in India. You know 0:20:36.760 --> 0:20:39.119 the cobra and the woven baskets with a man sitting 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:42.119 cross legged playing a flute in front of it. Snake 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:46.679 charmers were historically known as magicians and healers, making a 0:20:46.800 --> 0:20:51.359 living with these public exhibitions. It's an ancient tradition that's 0:20:51.400 --> 0:20:55.760 been outlawed in many places, but still practiced across North Africa, 0:20:56.080 --> 0:20:57.640 the backwoods of India. 0:20:57.680 --> 0:20:59.240 It's illegal there, but they still do it. 0:20:59.280 --> 0:21:04.600 Some Lakistan, Bangladesh Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and I don't fully 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:09.080 understand the cultural significance of it. But think about this 0:21:09.119 --> 0:21:13.560 for a minute. What if an overalled hillbilly imagine someone 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:17.399 like a Brent Reeves carrying around a timber rattler in 0:21:17.440 --> 0:21:21.040 a grain bucket and playing a banjo, will that rascal 0:21:21.320 --> 0:21:24.320 coiled up and rattled within striking distance. 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:26.959 Bros. I would be into that. 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:29.280 And I'm kind of saying this tongue in cheek, but 0:21:29.800 --> 0:21:35.040 I'm quite serious too. That would be a compelling cultural image. 0:21:35.200 --> 0:21:38.600 Now I'm not into this, but perhaps somehow it's in 0:21:38.640 --> 0:21:43.199 the same family as these American snake handling churches. I 0:21:43.240 --> 0:21:47.200 can only imagine what it's like for those snake charmers. 0:21:47.680 --> 0:21:49.840 It really is dancing with death. 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:54.720 However, there's more to this Springfield snake charming stuff. 0:21:55.240 --> 0:21:55.920 Here's Kyle. 0:21:57.400 --> 0:22:00.480 But what's interesting is is I was lucky enough to 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:04.479 meet the children of that city manager, and they had 0:22:04.520 --> 0:22:08.080 a scrapbook with every clipping in every news article from 0:22:08.119 --> 0:22:12.520 when this happened, historical documents, editorial cartoons in the local paper, 0:22:12.560 --> 0:22:16.120 the Newsleader that were about the cobra scaring things. And 0:22:16.359 --> 0:22:19.080 one of the things that you find out when you 0:22:19.119 --> 0:22:22.439 go a little deeper into this story, is nobody in 0:22:22.520 --> 0:22:26.320 the city actually believed that playing snake charming music was 0:22:26.440 --> 0:22:28.639 going to bring snakes out and then they were going 0:22:28.680 --> 0:22:32.679 to kill them. But they had to do something to 0:22:32.760 --> 0:22:37.000 show the people that they were trying to deal with this, 0:22:37.160 --> 0:22:40.560 even though nobody knew how to deal with this. So 0:22:40.840 --> 0:22:45.200 you know, the van playing snake charming music. It's easy 0:22:45.280 --> 0:22:50.280 to laugh at now, but less than like, they weren't 0:22:50.359 --> 0:22:55.360 naive and they weren't trying to throw this weird hail 0:22:55.440 --> 0:22:58.520 Mary pass and the snake charming music would bring them out. 0:22:58.880 --> 0:23:02.480 It was really just ab out showing the city that 0:23:02.520 --> 0:23:05.440 they were willing to try anything at all. 0:23:07.119 --> 0:23:09.359 So they this goes all the way back to like 0:23:09.800 --> 0:23:15.040