Each week, the Shreveport-Bossier Journal’s Tony Taglavore takes to lunch a local person – someone who is well-known, successful, and/or influential, and asks, “What’s Your Story?”
By TONY TAGLAVORE, Journal Services
She was elderly, but not so old the woman living in the country didn’t trust her eyesight. She knew what she saw and called him to come get it.
“I’m walking around her property — walking around, walking around — and I couldn’t find the
snake . . . . In one last ditch effort, I took one more lap around the part of a tree that had fallen in her yard. I happened to see it up under the part of the tree that had fallen. I told my wife to bring the bucket — I had the hook and the gloves . . . . I’m pulling the snake, but it’s getting away from me. It’s a big six-foot timber rattlesnake— a canebrake rattlesnake. It starts to go under where the tree made a divot in the ground . . . . I reached in there and grabbed it by the tail and started pulling. Once I got a good grip on the tail, I started using my hook and my tongs to coax it out of there.
The snake was angry, its tail a rattlin’.
“When I got it in the bucket, I moved the hook out of the way so I could get the tail end that I was holding with my hand in there. It was such a large snake, and I had a smaller bucket. It came up out of the bucket and got the hand I was holding the tail with.”
“Got the hand”, as in the snake’s fangs sank deep into the glove, which was made of Kevlar. The glove was designed to keep fangs from penetrating the skin. There wasn’t any anti-venom nearby, so it’s not a stretch to say the glove may have saved his life.
“At that immediate moment, I was just thinking about getting it in the bucket and screwing on the lid. After that, and when my heart rate started coming down, I looked at the glove and of course there’s venom on it.”
Steve Kennedy, aka “The Snake Guy”, and owner of Snaketuary, told me that chilling story, and his story, during lunch at a place he chose, Daq’s Wings & Grill, on Shreveport’s Southern Loop. The restaurant did not offer fried snake meat, so Steve ordered a cheeseburger, he added jalapenos and avocados, and had an order of fries, along with sweet tea. I made quick work of 15 wings and a side salad and drank a lot of water.
“It would have been a bad situation (without gloves). I knew to try to stay calm, even though my adrenaline was going because I was dealing with a six-foot rattlesnake. If I had gotten bitten, I would have told my wife exactly where to go, but we were probably an hour away from the hospital. I would have just laid flat in the back seat and calmed myself down, while my wife drove.”
The soon-to-be 46 year-old has more than a passing interest in snakes. He has a passion, which began when he was a boy.
“I was always fascinated with snakes. I would always see the little rough earth snakes or the Dekay’s Brownsnakes, the little small brown ones, in my yard. I used to catch those all the time. I saw a couple of Kingsnakes in the yard. I was always fascinated, but a little scared, because I didn’t know about them.”
How fascinated?
“My dad killed a Kingsnake one time, and I kept the body in a jar for several days, until it started stinking pretty bad.”
Steve realized when it came to snakes, he was different than most people.
“The question was always in the back of my head, ‘Why do people have a fear of snakes? Why are they constantly killing snakes?’ People’s first reaction is to kill snakes, and I didn’t understand that. I would always read books about snakes and learn what I could.”
Steve grew up and married Patricia, his bride since 2000. But Steve waited two years after they said, ‘I do’, before he told Patricia of his love of reptiles. Why wait? Was he worried his til-death-do-us-part partner would slither away?
“We would go into the pet store on the weekend . . . . I asked her ‘Hey, can I buy one?’ She was all
gung ho. She said let’s do it! She’s always been supportive.”
But one was not enough.
“That one snake turned into two, two into four, so on and so on. (My collection) kind of kept growing.”
Ya think? Steve and Patricia share their Shreveport home with “several hundred” snakes – Rat, King, Boa, Python, as well as venomous snakes.”
Not to mention a few other animals.
“At first, we had them all throughout the house. Then, we enclosed our carport and put everything out there. We just built a separate room to separate the snakes from the lizards. We got some pens set up outside for all the tortoises we have. We’re rapidly expanding.”
And yes, Steve’s neighbors know he and his wife aren’t the only breathing species living in the house.
“Our business insurance considers us a zoo, so they charge us zoo rates. It’s exorbitant.”
If you come across an unwelcome snake on your property or inside your home, Steve will come get it. Most times, he doesn’t charge. Steve simply asks for a donation. How dedicated is he to responding to your call?
“My family was dressed up real nice. We were going to a wedding. It came across my pager (remember those?): SNAKE IN A HOUSE. I told my family, ‘We’ve got to turn around. We’ve got to go.’ . . . . I’m looking through all the cabinets – I cannot find the snake. I said, ‘Look, I’m late for a wedding . . . . The owner of the house looked at me and said, ‘You’re not leaving this house until that snake is gone.’ He went and got a Sawzall, made two cuts in the cabinet, dropped the Sawzall, and said, ‘There it is.’ It was a big six-foot rat snake that had gotten in between the cabinet and the floor.”
And now, the rest of the story.
“I usually keep things in my car to keep snakes in, in case I run across one. I didn’t have my normal containers, but I had a pillowcase. I tied the snake up in the pillowcase. We walked into the wedding. We were late. It was too hot, so I couldn’t leave it in the car. I sat there the whole time with a snake in my lap during the wedding. Thankfully, no one asked me if it was their wedding present.”
I could have listened to Steve’s stories for hours. But assuming he had to feed one of his “several hundred” snakes, I asked my final question. As always, what is it about his life story that might be helpful to others?
“Sometimes people have gifts and callings that may seem strange – that may seem out there – different from everybody else. If that’s your dream, if that’s what you feel like you’ve been called to do, that’s what you need to pursue. I think too many people fall into that trap of, ‘I see my parents doing this. I see my friends doing this,’ and they start a path in life that’s not their own. If you feel something burning deep inside your heart, if you have a passion for doing something, you need to pursue that passion. You may change the world one day.”
Do you know someone with a story? Email SBJTonyT@gmail.com.