My friend Jack who just returned form the show told of
his air conditioner being pulled from the hotel room
wall while he was in there. He checked into another
hotel.He confirms this article as being accurate.
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/WestVolusia/03WVolEAST01WF081604.htm
Storm doesn't deter reptile lovers from expo
By VIRGINIA SMITH
Staff Writer
Last update: 16 August 2004
DAYTONA BEACH -- On the floor of the Ocean Center
Sunday, Allen and Anita Salzberg signed copies of
their newest book, "When You Dream in Green."
It's a collection of little anecdotes about "herpers,"
or reptile lovers -- and when you know you might be
one.
When your arms are full of claw marks, for example.
When your dreams are the color of iguanas. Or when
you're in Daytona Beach, hanging out at the National
Reptile Breeders' Expo, as Hurricane Charley hurtles
toward your home and family across the state -- and
you stay put.
Or when you get bitten on the thumb by a baby
rattlesnake and wonder, enroute to the hospital, how
the snake is holding up.
Few herpers would blink at such behavior. "I guess
we're kind of like Civil War re-enactors or something.
It's a self-contained reality," said Allen late
Friday, as the storm beat so hard against windows of
the Adam's Mark hotel, where most of the herpers were
staying, that staff had to herd them deep into its
hallways and ballrooms. Some attended biology
lectures, others slammed beers and chandeliers
flickered in a disturbingly Titanic-like setting.
But the mood was generally upbeat. Certainly nobody
seemed to think that the breeders' expo -- an annual,
weekend-long Woodstock for reptile and amphibian
enthusiasts, equal parts carnival and zoo and flea
market -- should be canceled for a mere hurricane.
Indeed many herpers, especially the non-Florida ones,
seemed to regard the storm as a bonus to the event.
One drunken British herper ran the beach, rescuing
starlings that had plunged into puddles; others
tempted fate and pressed their noses against the
Adam's Mark's windows, watching palms bend like Gumby
in the dark.
Saturday morning, hundreds of herpers trickled out of
their hotels, getting their first look at a
post-Charley world as they crossed State Road A1A to
the Ocean Center. There, while the rest of the city
figured out what to do with stray tree limbs and no
electricity, two reptile shows were up and running,
lights on and everything. Though business was
predictably slow.
Downstairs was the enormous non-venomous reptile expo,
where a kaleidoscope of creatures -- velvety geckos
and pencil-thin snakes -- wriggled in deli cups. Corn
snakes sold for $25; albino ball pythons, bred for
their bright buttery color, sold for thousands.
Children ogled baby turtles. Upstairs, through a
separate entrance was the much smaller venomous expo,
where a popular T-shirt showed a cobra eating a
bright, buttery albino ball python; a snakebite
paramedic roamed the halls; and no one under 18 was
let in.
Torsten Schweer, a vendor from Tecklenburg, Germany,
sat alone behind his glass case of poisonous snakes.
Before him were a pair of green mambas from Africa;
the female had nearly killed him three months ago.
Schweer held up a knuckle that was still somewhat
swollen from the bite. Within hours of being bitten,
Schweer was airlifted to a hospital in Hamburg. He got
saltwater injections and his throat swelled "like a
lump," he said, forcing him onto a respirator. The
whole experience cost him 3,500 Euros -- that's $4,300
in American cash. "But the baddest part," said
Schweer, "was seeing my family -- my mother, my wife,
my two boys, all crying." His mother drove from the
Netherlands, he said, weeping the whole way.
When he recovered, he said, his wife did not pressure
him to sell his mambas. "She knows if I lose the
snakes she loses me." But soon he began selling them
voluntarily --- he was down from 19 pairs, he said, to
the two before him now. They were $200 each,
restrained in plastic boxes.
"The male is not so aggressive," he said. "She is very
aggressive."
As he spoke, the heavily tattooed Schweer, who is 6
feet 6 inches tall, took the female from the case and
regarded her through the plastic. "I think these are
the most intelligent snakes," he said softly. "The
best killers."
Across the hall from Schweer, Tanith Tyrr, a Brevard
County snake rehabilitator, promoted her
"adopt-a-mamba" program, which farms out mambas that
have been injured or abused, sometimes by people who
remove their fangs. She nurtures many herself, often
with the help of an expert veterinarian.
Tyrr had one fully rehabbed green mamba in a cage,
ready to go to a loving home -- by Saturday evening,
someone had adopted it. But Schweer still had his.
Hours later in the Adam's Mark, the herpers staged
their annual conservation charity auction. A
snake-shaped walking stick went for $650; a
lizard-themed quilt for $2,200, an unspeakable gag
item not worth the box it came in, $1,000.
Pretty soon $12,000 was raised, all for two crocodile
conservation programs. Collette Adams, the curator of
reptiles at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Texas, runs one
of them.
"When that quilt was sold I was crying," she said. "It
was an overwhelming feeling that these people would be
so generous. Most of these vendors have been losing
money all day from the hurricane, and they spent so
much."
Adams' program, which began in the 1980s, aims to
restore a particularly aggressive species of crocodile
to rivers in the Philippines -- an animal so reviled
that they're usually killed on sight, causing their
numbers to drop severely. But lately, she said, the
fishermen are coming around to a more herper-like
world view, leaving the testy crocs to their ways.
Outside the Ocean Center Sunday morning, a California
vendor squeezed and stared at his hand.
In a special secured room upstairs, reserved for
vendors to pack and unpack poisonous snakes, a baby
western diamondback had nipped Jeremy Bednarsh. Two
streaks of blood ran from his thumb.
Longtime herpers circled around, getting a look. Most
of them had been bitten at some point, and few thought
this one looked serious. They doubted any venom had
gone in. "Hey, at least it's not a Taipan bite," said
one, referring to a hyper-deadly Australian snake.
"You gotta look on the bright side."
"It's nothing," said Bednarsh. "It's more the
embarrassment --I've been doing this for 12 years and
never been bitten! That's what kills me." Sweat beads
dotted his forehead. He was getting thirsty.
The snakebite paramedic, hired for just such a
contingency, was alerted.
On his way to Halifax Medical Center, where the
snakebite paramedic was waiting with his supplies,
Bednarsh vacillated between blowing off the bite -- "I
just hope I can get to the gym later" -- and mortal
terror, calling friends to make sure his dogs did not
go to the pound if, indeed, he died. He worried about
the snake that bit him -- if he'd slammed too hard on
the lid of its container afterward. But within hours,
both snake and herper were deemed fine.
