![]() ![]() ![]() There was usually a kind of carnival or circus noise coming up from the park, the hurdy gurdy sound of the carousel and the animal noises from the zoo sometimes combined with the summertime shrieks and laughter from the crowds at the swimming pool and, always, on weekends the drone of model airplanes being flown over by the river. The little amusement park with the bumper cars and the merry-go-round and the pretty Ferris Wheel with the enclosed carriages is gone too. Nowadays the WPA-era steps going up to Winton Terrace from the zoo are long gone and there is a security fence around the entire facility. I used to worry that some snakes had escaped and were hiding under my bed, so I was not entirely surprised when Pete escaped. It was creepy and exciting to go down into the zoo and see these shows. These little shows are a vivid memory that I recall from my childhood growing up in Park Hill. He wore hip boots and carried a handler's stick of some kind. Once or twice a day, in good weather, a zoo attendent would actually put on a kind of performance with the snakes in this enclosure. It was all kind of primitive by today's standards The snakes, including Pete, were kept in glass enclosed cages (almost like crates with glass fronts) around the sides of an outdoor enclosure that we used to call the "Snake Pit". The zoo did not have a gift shop back in those days. I am hoping that there are some other old timers out there able to recall the details concerning Pete's transformation into Patricia, and, please, no jokes about post-operative trans-sexual pythons. Does anybody know whether or not Pete/Patricia kept company with another male python? I think that is a requirement for laying an egg, but then again I am no expert on snake reproduction. It was at this point in my storytelling that my friend grew skeptical and pressed me for the details on this egg laying situation. ![]() I am pretty certain of my facts so far, but I also know that Pete turned out to be a girl python, a fact that emerged when she produced an egg about a year after her return to the zoo. The assumption was he was looking for food. He was recaptured on the hillside directly below my parent's house on Winton Terrace, apparantly trying to get into the monkey exhibit. Newspapers and TV reported sightings of Pete all over the city. Kids in my neighborhood could not play outside, and we feared for the safety of our dogs and cats. I never got to see it for myself, although as a young resident of Park Hill I was a regular visitor to the zoo.Īnyway, one day Pete, all 18 feet and 300 pounds of him, escaped, and he remained at large for 23 days. On Saturdays Pete would be turned loose in the arena to feast on a live chicken, or at least I was always told that this took place. Pete lived, alone as I recall, in one of these wooden and glass structures. Most of the snakes were housed in glass windowed terrariums that lined the walkway surrounding the arena. This was before the indoor facilities were built. The Snake Pit was a small outdoors arena where a zoo attendant, booted and armed with a long forked stick and a microphone, would display and handle many of the zoo's snakes, usually before a crowd of fascinated school children. ![]() I was telling a friend down here in Austin about Pete the Python's escape from the old "Snake Pit" at the FW Zoo back in the mid-1950's. ![]()
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