Down On The Farm
John Mellyn's livestock slither and make many shudder. He is owner of the Snake Farm, a laid-back roadside attraction.
By LOUIS B. PARKS; Houston Chronicle
"
I only have one bad snake dream," says John Mellyn, owner of
New Braunfels' Snake Farm, Texas' roadside home to the world's most lethal snakes. "
It always involves the mambas. "They're loose, and they're in Snake Farm, and I've got a full house, and the people won't listen to me when I tell them to move back."
Snakes on a Plane has Samuel L. Jackson, but Snake Farm, a low-brow but highly popular Texas attraction for 39 years, has real snakes. Some that are real lethal. "
I'd say (the biggest safety issue) is working with the mambas, the Taipans, the most lethal land snake in the world, and the king browns, the second most lethal land snake," says Mellyn, a lifelong snake fan. "
Those are the worst snakes we have. They are way worse than in the wild," he says, adding that captive snakes don't fear people. In the wild, the snakes would flee humans. "These will come to you because they kind of like us. Every time we open (their tank) we (feed) them."
By, say, zoo standards, Snake Farm is a very hang-loose operation. In addition to hundreds of snakes displayed in aquariumlike tanks, there are a couple of very large snakes out and about for visitors to touch, hold and photograph. Apollo, a lethargic, 128-inch-long, 78-pound albino
Burmese python, generally is out and willing to drape around your shoulders so you can scare the dickens out of Uncle Harold. That is if Uncle Harold ever gets up the nerve to get out of the car.
More often than not it's the kids in a family, fans of shows like
Crocodile Hunter and
Animal Planet, who walk right up and touch Apollo. "
I've been fond of snakes since forever," says Jonathan Taylor, 13, of Dallas, who wants to become a
herpetologist. While caressing Apollo adoringly, the teen boasts that he was once bitten by a python. "
I was petting it, and it snapped at my thumb."
Adults often are reluctant to touch the snakes until their kids eventually convince them. "
I've never touched a snake before," says Gisela Guajardo of San Antonio. Her 10-year-old daughter Estela wants a pet snake. "
It's real heavy, kind of strong."
Mellyn and his wife, Susan, have owned Snake Farm for 13 years — their kids also work there — and while they have enlarged and updated it, the attraction retains some of the carnival sideshow atmosphere that longtime customers remember. "
We lived in Bee Cave, near Lake Travis," says Jay Johnson, a Whitney minister who was 7 when he first visited Snake Farm with his parents in 1967, the year it opened. "
A lot of times we'd just stop in. We always had to go to Snake Farm." This day Johnson is with his own kids. "
I'd forgotten the python was out in the open," he says. "
I remember the snakes were always more active here than in most zoos."
Snake Farm seems an anachronism today, the kind of pre-interstate attraction that, along with tepee-shaped motel rooms and mom and pop hamburger stands, dotted the American landscape before 1970. Once its large signs were seen along several highways. The billboards — a scary-looking snake — was enough to wrangle travelers. There's still a billboard on Interstate 35 south of Kyle and another north of San Antonio. And, of course, a giant sign looms over the farm itself. Like the film's
Snakes on a Plane title, the name is elegant in its directness: Snake Farm.
"
(Originally) it was a carny thing," Mellyn says. "
There was a series of pits. It just kind of evolved from there. It still has a little bit of the carny thing going." Apparently, that's part of the appeal to many customers. "
They want to see dangerous, large and color, in that order," Mellyn says of Snake Farm's visitors. "
Big, bad, dangerous. They want to see the stuff (Crocodile Hunter) Steve Irwin plays with on TV."
Despite his mamba dream, Mellyn loves his job. Otherwise, he says, "
my dreams about snakes are always good dreams. I'll be frolicking through the forest, looking and finding neat specimens and deciding which ones to keep.
"I'm a kid who didn't have to grow all the way up. When I was a kid I'd flip rocks and find what's under them. I still like to flip rocks."
Down On The Farm
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