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CM: "In Asia I had a Wagners Viper strike from a shrub and one fang passed right through my lip. The venom released on to my chin, so I was alright. I have been lucky with hot stuff. Once, during one of our reptile shows in Central America, we had a Cobra get loose and run around in the crowd. It was a miracle no one got bit that time. We also had a spitting cobra in that show and it hit me in the face by squirting the venom through the screened top of the cage. None got in my eyes and I quickly washed up."
NHM: "Remember, I participated in some of those shows too. I have a lot of great personal stories on that period. And the spitting cobra - the first time I saw that snake it was in an aquarium on the floor at the Calpules wild animal compound and he shot a stream at me when I approached to see what was in the aquarium. I had my glasses on, and that is what saved me! Familiarity does breed contempt. We could be very causual with the handling of some dangerous stuff sometimes. And have you forgotten the story about the venom lab guy that wanted us to sell him Fer-De-Lance venom? "
CM: " Right! Now how did that go?"
NHM: (For the sake of clarity I am coming out of the transcript of the interview and just writing the entire story as it happened.) We had the Zoo in Honduras then, (1975) and this guy pulls up in a cab and walks into the office with his fancy aluminum box. He told us he had a venom lab in California and will pay us $60.00 a gram for Bothrops atrox venom - as much as we can get. We were excited about the prospect of easy money and asked how to extract the venom, so he opened the box and showed us the equipment. So then I said we needed a demonstration and took him and the box into the 'Hot Snake Room'. The big Barba Amarillas (local name) are in a wooden box and I hook out a heavy 5-6 footer to the tile floor and pass the hook to the guy. He looks at the snake and says he will need help with one this big, so as soon as he pins the head with the hook and grabs the neck we are to grab the snake too. But first he puts the specimen vile with the rubber cover on the table - that is the 'extraction bottle' we are going to use. Now we go into action and swoop-up the snake and head for the table. But the guy stops before we get there and I can see the sweat running off his face like a river. Of course the big snake is twisting and squirming the whole time - this species has a bad reputation and deserves it! The guy starts yelling: "The snake is tearing away it's own skin trying to bite me!" He had a good grip on the neck, but the snake was trying so hard to get a fang into his hand that it was ripping it's own skin as it twisted the head back to strike at what was gripping his neck. "On the count of three, everyone drop the snake!" was his next statement. So we dropped the snake, he gathered up his equipment and went out the door to get a cab, we dropped the idea of getting rich with snake venom sales. The following year I sent hundreds of venomous snakes to Miami for the same purpose - at the Miami Serpentarium. Let someone else do the milking!
Charlie in Honduras -packing up some snakes (1975).
NHM: "Alright, to pick up the story again - when did you return to the States and why?"
CM: "I went back to California in '67 so I could get a college degree. I had some college credit already from the University of the Philippines. So I figured I could take classes at the University at Berkeley and at the same time get a job that was animal related to support myself and family. When I applied at the Oakland zoo for a job they were impressed that I had gone to college in Asia, but what cinched the position was the interview. They asked how I would feel about having a Filipino as my boss, obviously testing my racial tolerance, and I replied that I would have no problem since my boss at home was Filipino. (Charlie had met his wife Josephine, a native of San Francisco, on one of his trips to the States by ship - when she was taking an Asian tour with her Filipino parents).
NHM: "So what was your position and how did it go?"
CM: "My studies and main interest and background was in herpetology - so I became the Curator of Reptiles. But I had broader responsibilities and even did a lot of 'show and tell' with various animals on the local TV network and in some school class rooms.. Again - there was so much in the way of interesting events, that a book could be written on just that zoo and college experience. But in the long run, I grew impatient with the progress at the university and the politics at the zoo. The zoo pay was low at every job level and checking around the country on zoo jobs I could see it was not much better anywhere else. I came to realize that I can do much better financially just working for myself again, and I had a growing family to feed and take care of"
NHM: "That is when you decided to get back into exotic animal exports. And what year was that?"
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