If you were wondering, Indian cobras aren’t native to Missouri. As the name implies, they are found in India and surrounding countries and should not be in America at all, much less in Missouri.

So, when they started showing up in the summer of 1953, people were surprised and terrified.

Indian cobras have a strong venom that is very dangerous to humans. In India, they are responsible for a large number of serious bites each year.

The first report of one of these cobras in Springfield took place on August 15, 1953. According to a local news report, Roland Parrish was in his backyard and happened to see a snake that he didn’t recognize.

He grabbed his garden hoe and killed it, not thinking it was anything terribly unusual.

Later that week, a bulldog was playing in some shrubs and found another one of these snakes in the same neighborhood. Word got around, and the police got involved to try to figure out what the snakes were and where they came from.

The police took the dead snake to a local science teacher, who was able to identify it as an Indian cobra.

In a blog post made for the 70th anniversary of the event, the History Museum on the Square in Springfield wrote:

“Mothers locked their children inside and would only allow them out to play if an adult stood watch with a garden hoe, ready to behead the snakes in a moment’s notice. Police officers were sent to investigate reports of suspicious snakes.

At one point, a radio van was equipped to play ‘Indian snake charmer music’ in an attempt to lure the snakes out of hiding, into the waiting arms of the large group of men with garden tools following the truck on foot. Sadly, snakes only react to the vibrations, not the sounds and it did not help the search efforts.”

As fall rolled in, 11 cobras had been killed and reported to the police, with another one captured alive. The one that was captured alive was turned over to Dickerson Park Zoo, where it lived out the rest of its life.

Nobody knew where these snakes had come from until 1988. It was then that Carl Barnett shared his story with the local media.

It turns out that Barnett, who was just a kid at the time, had a deal worked out with a local pet store owner. He would collect local snakes and trade them for fish.

One day, the fish he picked out for the trade had died before he even got home. When the pet store owner refused to give him a replacement, he was upset.

He left the pet store and went around back, where he found a number of wooden crates that were labeled to say they contained snakes. Barnett explained what happened next:

“I thought to myself, ‘Well, these aren’t the same snakes I traded for the fish, but they’re probably about equal value. So maybe I’ll just leave the door open, and then we’ll be even.’ And that’s just what I did — just left the trap door open and got on my bike and rode home.

I started hearing that cobras were turning up in people’s yards near Mowrer’s shop. I realized what I’d done, and I was scared to death. Every time someone mentioned the cobras, I just wilted.”

Fortunately, nobody was bitten or seriously injured by the snakes. The snakes were either all killed (except the one in the zoo), or else they died out over the winter, so no breeding population was able to take hold.

The city of Springfield still remembers the great cobra scare of 1953 each year, marking one of its most unusual events in history.

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