Long story short, a pet store owner pissed off a kid who was trading him local snakes for aquarium fish. One of the fish died quickly, making the kid think he was due a replacement fish, the pet store owner told him "tough luck, get lost" making the kid so angry that he opened the crate of snakes out back, on the delivery entrance...
Why was a Springfield pet shop getting 11 Indian Cobras, in 1953? Someone must have been buying them, or ordering them, through the pet store.
Anyway, the cobras went out into the neighborhood scaring the hell out of the locals... who killed 6 of them with hoes... I kid you not.
“They played Indian snake charmer music on the speakers,” Sellars said, “well, snakes cannot hear. They’re driving along slowly with this group of people, like a Mel Brooks movie, all they needed was flaming torches and it was just hilarious. And waiting for the snakes come crawling out so they could kill them.”
The whole city believed that they escaped from the pet store, who acknowledged that he had cobras, but, that none had escaped. He was vilified, had his business license revoked, and died without his innocence being proven.
35 years later, that kid, now 49 years old, spoke up to solve the 3 and half decade long mystery.
The Great Cobra Scare lasted from August 15th to October 25th. Life Magazine even covered it
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