Once Upon a Python: When Pete Went Hither, Slither, and Yon

The year is 1954. As the sun rises on the morning of Saturday, September 18, it shines like a beatitude upon an America of peace and plenty. Dwight David (“I Like Ike”) Eisenhower is president; Hollywood bombshell Marilyn Monroe has married Bronx bomber Joe DiMaggio; Bill Haley and the Comets have recorded “Rock Around the Clock.”
But wait! Something has gone horribly wrong: One of our pythons is missing.

Yes, Pete the python has escaped from his cage at the Forest Park Zoo and has gone . . . AWOL (absent without legs). Pete the python, along with Queen Tut the elephant and Topper the giraffe, has been a favorite attraction among zoo visitors. Harry Jackson, the herpetologist who owns Pete and operates the zoo’s reptile show for the city, had bought Pete from a circus in Bangkok, Thailand, when Pete was four years old, barely knee high to a . . . knee.

Channel 5 archival footage:

press-pete-9-18-54 headline

The Fort Worth Press raises the alarm about the “man-killer” on the day of his escape.

Pete may be, in custom car terms, a lowrider of the animal kingdom, but what he lacks in height he makes up for in length and weight: Pete is now eighteen feet long and weighs 150 pounds. (Dallas Morning News photo shows Jackson holding Pete’s head.) A python that big can crush a human. After Pete’s escape is discovered, more than one hundred policemen rush to the zoo to clear out four thousand visitors. A sound truck warns people: “There’s a dangerous snake loose.”

Zoo officials warn people not to search for the fugitive.

So, naturally people search for the fugitive.

Where might he be? Gotta think like a serpent. Searchers logically begin their search in Forest Park, then in adjacent Trinity Park, even in the nearby Park Hill enclave. No snake in affluent Park Hill, not even a . . . well-heeled one.

Oh, he’s a crafty one, that Pete.

Pete indeed has several advantages: He can swim, he can climb. He can slither. He can quiver. He can crawl on his belly like a . . . snake. He can wedge himself into tight spaces. His coloration can make him difficult to see in foliage. And he doesn’t leave footprints.

As each day passes and Pete remains at large, the search parties grow more numerous, and the search area grows wider, in part because Cowtown has come down with an acute case of python fever. People sell Pete the python T-shirts and Peteburgers. Blue Bonnet Bakery on Camp Bowie Boulevard sells a Pete the python coffee cake with cherries for eyes. Pete fever is also fed by hope for a reward: Star-Telegram publisher Amon Carter has offered $500 ($4,000 today) for Pete’s return: $250 to the person who finds Pete and reports his whereabouts and $250 to the person or persons who bring Pete back alive.

Searchers first scour the area around the zoo in cars, on foot, in boats. Searchers walk in a line, spaced ten feet apart, beating the bushes, looking in trees and gullies and storm drain tunnels. They search in and along the Trinity River. They search at night using floodlights and flashlights.

pete-helicopter-640

Bell Helicopter provides a chopper, the reasoning being that the downdraft from the rotor blades will blow Pete from the branches of any tree he is in.

pete escapes st pm 18Page 1 of the evening Star-Telegram on September 18. The banner story was written by George Dolan.

The search spreads to other parts of town. Morbidly fascinated children take up the hunt. An example: On Burton Street in Poly, a boy of five has somehow become convinced that Pete is holed up in the front yard juniper bush of a neighbor, Mr. Martin. Because Pete is cold-blooded, the mild September nights may make him sluggish and in need of warmth. Plenty of warmth in Mr. Martin’s juniper bush, I reason. While my parents think I am watching westerns on TV and nurturing my crush on Annie Oakley, I sneak out and up the street to Mr. Martin’s front yard. I poke a stick into the juniper bush, half afraid Pete isn’t in there, half afraid he is.

He isn’t. He got away.

Dang. That snake is good.

pete-ouija

A woman visiting from Louisiana says her daughter has consulted a Ouija board and reports that she has divined Pete’s hideout: behind Jack’s Bar in the Forest Park area near the zoo. Fort Worth police check out the tip from the psychic snake whisperer. Police find no Pete. Heck, they don’t even find a Jack’s Bar.

Dang. I told you that snake is good, didn’t I?

There are even abduction theories: Pete was kidnapped by a rival zoo, by a herpetologist, by a snake charmer, by a circus.

Another woman advises searchers: “All snakes—when they escape—go in a southeasterly direction,” she says, “and stop at the first railroad trestle.”

(“Southeasterly”? I know, I know: Where would a snake carry a compass?)

Pranksters predictably have a field day. In Trinity Park a man finds a sixteen-foot-long pseudo Pete made of automobile inner tubes stuffed with newspaper. A wire is attached to one end. Park Superintendent Ham Hittson theorizes that pranksters had pulled the rubber reptile through the underbrush in the park, resulting in false sightings of Pete.

Twenty-five of SMU’s Kappa Sigma fraternity members and their dates join in the hunt, searching downtown Cowtown armed with BB guns, tennis rackets, potato sacks, and butterfly nets. They return to Big D empty-handed.

The search makes headlines from coast to coast

And even Down Under.

Then the Fort Worth-Dallas intercity rivalry rears its head. What’s black and white and green all over? Envious Paul Crume’s Dallas Morning News column of day 4.

pete headsHere is a sampling of headlines from the Star-Telegram and Press as Pete remains at large.

Predictably, Pete is commercialized, appearing in an ad for houses in Fort Worth and an ad for an automobile dealership in Bonham.

Meanwhile, herpetologist Harry Jackson has begun sleeping on a cot in the Children’s Zoo during the search just in case Pete suffers reptile remorse and returns on his own.

pete caught st am 10-4Sure enough. Early on October 3, the fifteenth morning after the great escape, the zoo’s Al the chimpanzee squeals, waking Jackson and triggering a jungle cacophony from other zoo animals. Less than one hundred feet from the snake pit, Jackson sees Pete. Yes, the peripatetic python has returned. Again the Star-Telegram‘s banner story is written by George Dolan. (Later rumors will circulate that Pete’s great escape was, in fact, a hoax, a publicity stunt perpetrated by Jackson, abetted by Dolan. When Dolan is questioned, his response will be worthy of Alice in Wonderland: He will puff on his pipe like the Caterpillar on his hookah, smile like the Cheshire Cat, and say nothing.)

pete 10-4-54 dmnPete is subdued. Calm once again reigns in the zoo, in Fort Worth, in my neighbor’s juniper bush.

pete mouth st am 10-4

But the Star-Telegram reports on October 4 that when Jackson treats Pete’s sore mouth, Pete resists. Jackson insists. Pete re-resists. Pete bites the hand that feeds him.

This image is from news footage by WBAP-TV. Pete appears 10:28 minutes into the video compilation.

pete jackson gets a shot st am 10-4

Jackson requires treatment of his own: a tetanus shot.

pete marilyn and joe st pm 10-4On October 4, after being placed briefly in reptilian time-out to reflect upon his behavior, Pete, ever the showman, is back on display for his admiring public. But wait! Say it ain’t so, Joe! That same front page notifies us that Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe have separated after less than nine months of marriage.

pete his own story 4Also on October 4 the Press scoops the Star-Telegram, giving Pete his first byline as the newspaper publishes Pete’s “in his own words” account of his great adventure.

But Pete had one more surprise up his . . . sleeve. A case of hiss and hers: On New Year’s Eve 1957 Pete laid fifty big, white eggs. Pete was promptly renamed “Patricia.”

Alas, Patricia stopped eating and died February 23, 1958. She was about eight years old. I can find no news updates on the eggs after her death, so apparently they did not hatch. Pete/Patricia the python died without progeny.

But, oh, the legend that snake left behind.

Ssssssssuggested reading: Retired Star-Telegram writer and editor Roger Summers has written a children’s book about Pete.

Cowtown at Play

This entry was posted in Fauna, Fort Worth Underfoot, Life in the Past Lane, South Side. Bookmark the permalink.

9 Responses to Once Upon a Python: When Pete Went Hither, Slither, and Yon

  1. Judy Nix says:

    When I was 10 years old, my family met in Forest Park for a family reunion. Pete was missing at that time and everyone was on high alert. A relative who lived in the Fort Worth area later sent to us in Oklahoma a newspaper clipping with a picture made that day that included a man sitting on a park bench. The caption was something like “where’s Pete”? That man was my daddy and his name was Pete. I wish I could find the clipping.

    • hometown says:

      I searched the Star-Telegram archive for “Where’s Pete?” and found nothing. The photo could have been in the Press, which won’t be available online for a while.

  2. Judy Jarratt says:

    Great story, brings back childhood memories. I was very sure Pete had traveled to nearby Italy, TX and would show up in my yard..

  3. Kelly Riley says:

    I remember this incident well, my great Aunt Mildred Bozeman (Tad Lucas’ sister) was certain Pete had slithered his way to River Oaks and was hiding near her home on Cody Court!

  4. wanda faye ellis says:

    would like to place an order

  5. Pete says:

    My father was in Army Air Corp during that time (Carswell Air Force base in Fort Worth), I was born 9/30/54 and actually gained the nick name “Pete” and have carried it all my life because of that snake! True Story! I’m now 63!

  6. mellinda says:

    you’re in fine form

Leave a Reply to mellinda Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *