It started simply enough. We went to the reptile show at the county fair. Myself, my husband, my son, and 20 random kids and parents. But of course it’s my husband who ends up in the fairground parking lot buying Gila monster eggs to take home and hatch himself.
I knew he was unique. I did. And I loved that about him. Who else goes into the pest control business as an animal lover? I fell in love with him over drinks at Hooters on our third date when he told me about how he feels he can protect more creatures through pest control than he ever could as an environmental activist. Was I shocked when he pulled a rat from his pocket to prove it? The opposite. I was elated.
I’m an animal lover too.
But Gila monsters are different. They’re poisonous, obviously. Really poisonous. Protect them sure, but I didn’t think we should own any animal that needs its venom sacs removed for safe handling. That’s not fair to the animal or us. So that was a bit of a red flag, but luckily the first batch never hatched, and I was able to convince him not to try and get a second. Blowjobs are persuasive, my mother always said, and she’s right!
But then it was Jesus Lizards. Which are in-aptly named. Not only can they not walk on water, but nowhere in the Bible did the king of kings shoot blood out his eyes. Not cute. They are very fast and bitey and really good at hiding. We lost 5 of 6, and the 6th our son stabbed with a pencil trying to defend himself. Just speared the little thing right through the mouth and straight out the back of its neck. Took forever to die, and just made horrible noises. So sad. We filmed the whole thing.
Yes it kept going. A white king cobra, no surprise, this one was a rescue. Even though it’s venom sacs were already removed, which we are both deeply opposed to, we didn’t cause it, we just gave it a home as it was a senior citizen and was no longer suitable for travel and handling in the reptile show.
Punjab was his name, and he was a regal character, truly a royal creature. I’m not sure if they have kings or sultans or what in India, but whatever they have he was that (what do they have… note to self to look it up on Lexus Nexus next time I’m at Anne’s house).
Couple problems emerged. 1) Punjab was not a male. 2) Punjab was pregnant and laid a whole clutch of eggs. I don’t know if pregnant is the right term (LEXUS NEXUS) but first she was fat and then she was skinny after she dropped the eggs. Like 3 dozen. This is where the trouble comes in as you can probably guess. It was a really hard decision to make. But ultimately I had to trust my husband’s experience and wisdom, and despite everything that happened, I still thinking incubating the eggs was the right decision.
It wasn’t that either of us were opposed to natural birth. I think we would have preferred to let Punjab go through the whole cycle. But collecting the babies would have been so much harder in her box terrarium than it was in the plastic incubator. Getting Punjab off the clutch was hard enough. She was so mad. I really felt for her, you know, as a mother myself. But in the end, with the incubator, we only lost two eggs, and if she’d brooded them herself, she’d have lost at least five, and as many as half. I think if she’d could have made the choice, with a full knowledge of how successful we’d be, she would have wanted us to hatch the eggs. And not just that batch, we got five more batches out of her, and then from her offspring we got over 100 batches. We were the largest supplier of white king cobras in all of Wisconsin from 1993 to 2002. We paid cash for my son’s college with the money we made from selling snakes. We bought an RV, brand new, we got the lake house, I had my ear fixed.
And we made so many people happy. White king cobras have a lot of love to give. They’re the perfect snake really because they are the best balance between venomous and constrictor. They’re big for a venomous snake, like a small python really, and they like to wrap themselves around you like a python too. We had some that would sleep with their owners, just cuddle them. We knew one family that kept two snakes in bed with them along with their dog and a new baby. We helped a lot of people overcome their fear of snakes with Punjab’s babies and granbabies and great great granbabies.
We also met all of Motley Crue, Travis Tritt, Ronnie Bell from Bel Biv Devoe, Lita Ford, Toni Morrison, Udai Hussain, Connie Chung, and the guy that played the mailman on Cheers, I always forget his name, we only met him the one time. Oh and George Foreman. He was a repeat customer. He liked to give our snakes as gifts.
It was a rich life. We got to visit movie sets, we had affairs with glamorous people. The fact that I became ultimately became addicted to heroin and amphetamines, and that my husband had to give me one of his kidneys after both of mine failed from tainted grain alcohol doesn’t diminish our success at all. We could have done anything, anything, I believe, when we were on top, started a new country even, if only those 42 Belgian school children hadn’t died.
So when I said we didn’t believe in removing the venom sacs, well, life changes you, you know? I’m still opposed to it in theory, but in reality, knowing how much love we brought into the world, how many lives we changed for the better, human and serpent, that we just couldn’t have if we didn’t remove the venom sacs, and, yes, on most, the fangs as well, in the balance I know we did the right thing.
And the fact that we did it ourselves is important to me. It’s not an easy procedure. And we learned pretty quickly that no one else would take more care to do it right than we would. My husband got where he was able to do it so quickly and cleanly that I am convinced to this day that he should have been a plastic surgeon. He is just so precise with a blade. I wish he could have done my kidney surgery. Uggh.
The problem with my husband though, is really his judgment in people. He is just too trusting with his heart. I was always uncomfortable with selling the fangs and preserved venom sacs, and I was really uncomfortable when he had the facility built to milk venom from mature snakes. I also told him that I thought it was a mistake to sell venom outside of China, that there was no need to develop a secondary market, but he’d been reading a lot of business books, and was convinced we need to diversify and verticaliize to get to a billion dollars in AGR.
But I recognized I was more about quality of life than gross revenue tallies, and that his ambition was what allowed for that quality of life to begin with. I didn’t nag. Still, our China buyer was discrete. And, we had to be so careful about what we were doing because some people would just not get it and we didn’t want it to jeopardize our breeding and home placement operation. So I was nervous, and Nikki Sixx said that if I just stuck to snorting heroin, I’d get most of the benefits without all of the downsides.
Obviously it didn’t last. When the Algerian man approached my husband, he just thought, this is our path. This is our start to a direct market. And obviously my husband didn’t know the Algerian was actually a terrorist. How could he? I guess I could have Lexus Nexus’d him, but my husband kept it from me. I don’t know. I should have been more involved. I feel bad. But anyway, when it came out in the news, he was a broken man, my husband. And then he told me what happened. And we were both broken.
How did he do it, the Algerian? He put in the milk, at the Catholic School. Our white cobra venom. The children all died terrible deaths, just sick for weeks and wasting away and rotting from the inside. I can’t think about it. I get too upset. The doctors never suspected our products. Thank god. If the Belgian Police hadn’t shot the Algerian in the head the moment they entered his apartment, he might have confessed how he did it and they could have traced it back to us. We couldn’t have lost everything. Thank god nobody else knows. Except you guys, but I can trust you. This is a safe space.
Anyway, after the Belgian kindergarteners died, oh and my husband declared that he’d always been a woman and had no interest in me sexually, despite all the many many blowjobs, that was when I started shooting horse. Just trying to numb the guilt I had about those kids dying and also the pain of totally not knowing my husband was actually a woman on the inside.
Heroin was great, obviously. You know. But trying to balance being a mom and a super successful rare animal breeder with being a heavy heroin user was hard. I should have mentioned that the business was still operating. We only sold it last year. Smoking amphetamines, though, that was the big mistake. I mean, the crystal really helped me be my best self for a time. It did. But you know the story. Heroin is really easy and dependable, but stimulants are greedy, you always need more to get to where you want to be.
I went from pills to powder to rocks and pipes and it was just not good for my body. Thank god for modern dentistry. See these? All fake. And then I needed alcohol and heroin to sleep, and then more alcohol, and then, George Forman’s cousin knew a guy who made 150 proof moonshine and bang, there go my kidneys.
So, that’s why I started going to meetings, and that’s how I learned that keeping secrets can lead to addiction and that’s why now I try to help lead meetings when Ariel isn’t available.
My name is Debbie and I am an addict and a former cobra breeder.
Randy, are you ready to share your story?