Book Review: Historical Snakeys by John Cann

Review by Carley Jones

So when I buy books I have a bad habit of not doing any research on the titles I’m interested in. I’ve been burned by this bad habit before when I’d spend 30-40 bucks on a book and it turned out to be 95% pictures. My friend Chris would usually chime in at this point with “well that means it’ll be perfect for you!” Implying that I have the reading intellect of a first grader. Hardy har.

The book I’ll be writing about now isn’t a bad book by any means. All in all I’m glad I bought it and took the time to read about people that have come and gone in the industry. It’s always fun to learn about how things were done back when herpetoculture was first getting its feet firmly planted in the world. I’d humbly rate this book a solid 6/10 for reasons I’ll express later.

I had no idea what to expect when I cracked open Historical Snakeys. I thought “snakeys” was just being used playfully or sarcastically in the title by the author. I learned immediately that it was instead referring to Australian showmen and women who freehandle venomous animals on display to scratch out a living, carnival style. If I had taken five seconds to actually read about the subject of the book instead of seeing an iteration of “snakes” and clicking “buy” I would have already known this. Anyway. This book does a great job at illustrating the greats. It talks about people who have lived through this exciting era of Australian herp history and are still around to publish a book about it today, as well as the people who have succumbed to envenomation from the very animals that put food on their table. The author is a former snakey who comes from a long line of snakeys. In the first chapter I remember thinking “It will be interesting to hear if he has any afterthought on his time as a showman, or if he’d do anything differently. I hope he writes about his opinions whether snakeys have molded the public’s perception of reptiles, and in what way.”

 I was delightfully surprised to read that John Cann, the author, is a genuine herpetologist. “Freehandler” and “academic” are not typically descriptors used in combination to define someone in herpetoculture. We all have our opinions of the people who choose to put the hobby at risk for clout from ignorant keepers or the public that simply doesn’t know any better. Forgive me, I couldn’t write the previous sentence without it either dripping with sarcasm or slapping the persons reading it across the face with a dozen four lettered words.

This book made me think of it as an Australian version of The Dragon Traders. The included letters from Fred Fox to and from his wife were very interesting even though it was a pain and a half to decipher the cursive. Any cursive hand-written notes were very enjoyable to read when you were finally able to understand what they were talking about using context clues. For this reason it took me twice as long to finish Historical Snakeys than it usually would and YES I am a big baby who would (and did) complain about it to anyone who would humor me and listen. God bless my coworkers and my family.

This was a great book if you’re a history buff. There’s tons of really neat old photos and names of people that I never would have known existed before. Sprinkled throughout the book are photos of cool Australian herps with short informational blurbs about them. A nice touch. I especially had fun reading about Snakey George and I truly  hope you will too.