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THEME: "Vintage Photos" Ross Allen Reptile Institute at Silver Springs

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sue1

TeeHee

irisriver

One year of elementary school we had guppies in classroom and I got to take the guppies home at end of year. I had generations of guppies for many years. Just last night mom and I were talking about those guppies. Smiles!☺

sue1

Hi, Iris. I had aquariums, both salt and fresh, for years. I had seahorses and starfish mostly in the salt one, and some pipe fish. Guppies and goldfish in the fresh. We also had tadpoles quite often after a good rain.

irisriver

As a child I had a pet Eastern Garter Snake. He ate mealworms and earthworms. I had a teacher who kept a black rat snake in the classroom and another teacher kept an aquarium in classroom. Grins!☺

ringleader

They learned early that they couldn't scare me with snakes. :-)))

sue1

Ardy, I bet those kids thought you were either really cool, or really weird.

sue1

I had a hog nosed snake named Raymond in my class for several years. We also had a water snake named Lucy, she was in a special set up with a water area and a dry area. The kids caught tiny frogs for Raymond and bugs and tadpoles for Lucy. I finally put her in my horse pond and the family who had brought in Raymond took him home (after their 3 kids were in my class, they took him every summer). He really couldn't be released. He wouldn't "play dead" anymore and was used to being fed with no effort. I have 2 black snakes that live in my yard now, they are in and out of my pool's waterfall. The small one scared one of the pool rescreening guys last week, glad it wasn't the big one. In later years, the FWC officer brought in snakes, turtles, frogs - he was my amphibian/reptile guy when we were studying vertebrates. A friend at ARC brought in eagles, owls, falcons, etc (birds of prey only) for the bird part of the unit, a friend brought miniature horses for the mammals and kids' parents could bring the family pet also for the vertebrate unit.

ringleader

Sue, my first year of teaching right out of college was at a private high school in Maitland, FL. Some of the students thought it would be fun to scare the new year teacher with snakes. What they didn't know was that as a teen there had been a man who came to youth meetings at our church and brought his snakes. I earned young that if the snake was not poisonous they were fun to hold. They are also very beautiful with their patterns and colors.

One of my first encounters was with a group of students who were very interested in something out on the grounds. I went over to see what was going on. They had a six foot indigo snake. I asked if I could hold it. I held it, looked it over, talked it it and returned it leaving a group of surprised students.
I had to teach two classes in the biology room - an English class first followed by an algebra class. The biology teacher told me when I came in that there was a pine snake in the desk drawer. Between classes while I was in the ha getting a drink - boy was it hot and humid in Sept. for this New Englander - one of the boys who had been there for biology earlier, got the snake out and was teasing the girls (and some of the boys). I walked up to him and said, "Frank, give me the snake." After a couple more requests he finally reluctantly handed it over. Again about a six footer. The snake wrapped itself around my right arm with its head in the palm of my hand and about 6 inches of tail hanging off my elbow. I tried to get it back in the drawer but I guess it was comfortable where it was. When I tried to unwind it it would wrap itself back around faster than I could unwrap. I taught that algebra class with a snake on my arm. Strange how most of the students didn't seem to want my help that day. It took the biology teacher and me to get the snake off my arm and back into the drawer. The students quit trying to scare me with snakes!!!

sue49

E. Ross Allen was a genuine Florida character. Born in 1908 in Pittsburgh, Pa., Ross gravitated toward the wilds of nature, and where could you find nature in greater abundance than Florida's Silver Springs?

As a boy he made Eagle Scout, and would later help the Boy Scouts set the standards for several wildlife merit badges. He was stand-in for Johnny Weismuller in the Tarzan movies shot at the springs, then went on to star in a few short films of his own that depicted him as a sort of latter day Tarzan -- an image he was careful to cultivate.

Marjorie Kinnian Rawlings, in her account of a snake hunt with Ross in Cross Creek, paints him as an easy going, patient man, with a great love for the wilds and understanding of its creatures, especially snakes. Characteristically, he had invited her on the hunt in hopes that she would write about him.

He founded Ross Allen's Reptile Institute at Silver Springs in 1929, displaying native snakes, alligators, and an "Indian Village" with Seminoles he recruited from the Everglades. After watching Ross handle the snakes and Indians wrestle gators, tourists could purchase their own souvenir live reptiles to take back home with them.

As time went on the emphasis at the Reptile Institute shifted a bit, from wild and woolly demonstration to scientific observation. Allen's studies of the American Alligator were among the first of this important reptile. Snakes were milked for their venom to be sent around the world for research and the production of antivenin. (Antivenin Ross would himself need on occasion, having been bitten more than a dozen times in the process). Reptiles raised here were sold to zoos and other tourist attractions across the country.

Silver Springs saw a sharp drop in visitors in the 1970's after the opening of Walt Disney World and the gas crisis, and as the main Silver Springs attraction began to consolidate itself the peripheral attractions, like Tommy Bartlett's Deer Ranch, the Prince of Peace Memorial, and the Reptile Institute closed or were absorbed into the single Silver Springs park.

sue49

In the early days of Silver Springs, an island was created among the attractions for the Ross Allen Reptile Institute. You reached it over a small wooden bridge. It was sort of scary, but I did discover I was OK with snakes and held several on different trips there. He was well know for "milking" rattlesnakes for their venom, used to make snake bite antidotes at the time. He was bitten many times.

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