SUMMARY:
A Public Ledger feature profiles Joan Proctor, curator of reptiles at the London Zoological Gardens, detailing her compassionate methods for handling snakes and her role in designing a new reptile house. The article shares anecdotes about boas and king cobras, feeding challenges in zoos, and public reactions to her work.
CONTENT:
PUBLIC LEDGER—PHILADELPHIA, SUNDAY MORNING. SEPTEMBER 23, 1923
Her Playmates are Ugly King Cobras!
Miss Proctor finds a handker-
chief useful for securing a grip
on the tail of a poisonous snake
friend that might become too
playful
Miss Joan Proctor,
Curator of Reptiles
in the London
Zoological Gardens,
Tells How She
Overcomes Her
Serpentine Pets With
Sheer Kindness
THE first woman in the world was on
sociable terms with a serpent, and
the world knows what came of that.
But here is one of Eve's youngest
daughters handling, petting and caring
for innumerable descendants of that wily
snake of old. Her name is Joan Proctor
and her official title is curator of reptiles
of the London Zoological Gardens.
The feeling that soft, purring, cuddly
little kittens awaken in other small girls
came to Joan when, as an inquisitive
ten-year-old, she first made the acquaint-
ance of a shining, wriggling green
garter snake, and that strange fondness
for the first enemy of man has grown
and grown until her greatest joy in life
is playing foster-mother to all the alli-
gators, toads, turtles and reptiles in
London's famous Zoo.
The family in which Joan belonged
didn't exactly favor the predilection of
its youngest member for crawling things,
when that first slimy, glassy-eyed
creature was introduced into their happy
home. But Joan was a positive little
person. She made it plain that her mot-
to was "Love me, love my snakes!"
and presently the whole Proctor clan
progressed from abhorrence to indiffer-
ence. They could put their hands into
a presumably empty vase on the living
room table, touch the cold coil of a snake
and not fall in a faint.
From indifference, the Proctors went
on until they began to share Joan's un-
canny affection for creeping things, and
now her home would not be home with-
out at least three boa constrictors
draping themselves about the furniture.
When Joan was seventeen she read
her first paper about snakes before the
Royal Zoological Society—a paper that
attracted serious attention. A few years
later, she became the unsalaried assistant
of the curator of reptiles at the
British Museum of Natural History—
truly a labor of love. In the museum
laboratory she worked and studied amid
hundreds of jars and bottles containing
creeping things. And all the time at
home she watched over the boas, the
bushmasters, the asps and the black
snakes that succeeded each other at
home as the darlings of her heart.
SO IT was that when the council of
the Royal Zoological Society found
it necessary to engage a new custodian
Eve in the Garden of
Eden was the first woman
on friendly terms with
the serpents, and so it has
come to pass that in this
day, many years after the
creation, there are daugh-
ters of Eve who do not
find it so distasteful to
train serpents and care for
them tenderly
Miss Proctor believes a daily "air-
ing is good for any household
pet. Here she is with a pet rep-
tile which she has taken for a
walk through the grounds of her
London home
for its great collection of living reptiles,
Joan, whose paper on snakes read be-
fore that august body so early in her
career had made such an impression,
was unanimously decided upon as the
logical recipient of the honor,
"It's a very simple thing to get on
with reptiles of any sort," says the
new curator, illustrating her point by
using one of her favorite poisonous-
tongued friends as a neckpiece. "By
using a handkerchief to make sure of
my grip on his tail, he can't get too
playful, you see. The dear things do
love to twist themselves about people's
necks, and then sometimes they squeeze
too hard." Which, it may be clearly
seen, is not so good for the neck.
"Kindness and real understanding are
back of success with snakes," decrees
the only woman occupant of a position
of such scientific note in Great Britain.
So great is the confidence reposed in
this young woman by those who know,
that she is not only to care for the huge
creeping things of the jungle, but has
been empowered to design the new home
for reptiles at the London Zoological
Gardens, and is now engaged in deciding
The neck of a human being is just the sort of a
"warmer" that a tropical snake
loves to coil about—and
squeeze—so Miss Proctor
adopts the simple "Safety
First" measure of holding the
head and tail securely as she
handles this small but surpris-
ingly powerful boa
When, as a ten-year-old girl, Joan
introduced her first creeping pet
into the Proctor household, her
parents were not at all inclined to
approve the strange friendship,
but Joan's persuasive powers over-
came that difficulty. Snakes of
varying lengths and colors have
since established friendly relations
with all members of the Proctor
household. Here is Joan's mother
demonstrating the innocent inten-
tions of a twelve-foot boa
constrictor just then draped about her
neck.
A neck, Miss Proctor explains, is
an ideal "warmer" for a tropical
snake. There's nothing he likes better
than to coil about it. Coping with Mr.
Boa in this case means keeping a firm
—usually expensive and difficult to ob-
tain—and that only will they swallow.
How to combat this suicide tendency
in reptiles will probably engross Miss
Proctor as it engrosses most curators
of these temperamental creatures. Ray-
mond L. Ditmars, of the New York Zoo,
reports that a continual offender in this
regard is the bushmaster.
King cobras are another variety of
Miss Proctor's charges likely to become
obnoxious at times. Or, at least, that
has been the experience of other cura-
tors.
When this monarch among snakes
arrived at the Bronx Zoo, he registered
his dislike of the institution and his
objection to remaining in it by refusing
to eat at all. As he is a cannibal, he
was offered every species of crawling
thing the authorities had ever heard of
a cobra eating. But no! Nothing
doing! Never in this world, so said the
cobra in question, if his expression mir-
rored his thoughts.
At length a "coach whip," a nice, five-
foot appetizing morsel, was sent in for
the rebel's breakfast. That hit the spot.
The king cobra ate it and demanded
more of the same. And there the scheme
struck a snag, for coach whips cost
three dollars each and aren't to be had
at all times for a striking monarch's
fastidious taste.
What was to be done? The diet of
coach whip had been kept up while the
curator engaged in thought, and now
long, thin strips of beef were cut in the
length of the favorite food, and each
strip covered with one of the old skins
the coach whip had shed. The skin
was tied about the beef at intervals and
the strips were offered to his majesty
for the next meal. And he ate them.
Diplomacy, as will be seen, belongs
not alone to court and political circles.
Snakes are not the only pets to be found in Miss Proctor's home. Pussy jumped upon a
table to see what this tricky boa was doing. The boa turned its head away as if it had not
the slightest interest in the cat's presence. The photographer snapped just before the lightning-
swift strike that was sad news for pussy
just where, what and how big the quar-
ters for her favorites shall be,
"Woman snake-charmer!" shrieked
local newspaper headlines, when this
announcement was made.
"I'm not!" contradicted Miss Proctor,
showing a surprising little glint in her
eyes—a glint that may be the secret
of her power over the descendants of
that serpent that tempted Eve.
"You might call me a 'snake-keeper,
if you will, but not a snake-charmer.
Do you know what a snake-charmer
is? Some queer voodoo sort of person with
supernatural powers. Of course, I'm not
that! It's so easy to get on with snakes.
Why, if you've learned the way to deal
with a two-foot garter snake, you know
how to cope with an eight-foot python!
They are all so much alike." The foster-
mother of London's reptiles caressed the
fine head of the amazingly powerful boa
grip on head and tail so that his en-
thusiasm for the human eater doesn't
carry him too far.
"There are many problems for this
little woman with the big nerve to solve,
for snakes who come from other lands
as captives are likely to behave er-
ratically as human beings under similar
circumstances. They go on hunger-
strikes. They commit suicide. They
demand one certain kind of food
THERE are about one thousand species
of snakes in the world and a goodly
portion of them are represented in Miss
Proctor's collection. There is, for in-
stance, a twenty-foot python, weighing
three hundred pounds, and a mere
specimen of burrowing snake but five
or six inches long and no thicker than
a goose quill. And there is a squatty,
flat-headed viper and an enormously
elongated tree snake—and goodness
knows how many more.
What's the good of snakes if you don't
happen to love them for themselves
alone, as does Miss Proctor?
California says they're good for ex-
terminating gophers that destroy the
crops on the Pacific Coast. Australia
applauds reptilian efforts to help them
get rid of the vermin plague, result of
accumulation of stocks of wheat because
of non-shipment during the war. Green-
wich, Connecticut, urges that snakes be
used to keep mole-infested lawns in
order. And the departments in Wash-
ington point out that rats are the great-
est destroyers of wheat the world ever
knew, and snakes live on rats to a great
extent!
So Miss Joan Proctor is not alone in
her opinion that snakes are well worth
cultivating.
