Slithery thrills and exotic creatures for visitors to new snake park
By Barbara Hollands
DEON NELL’s life has changed dramatically since he was a wily private eye and macho bodyguard in Johannesburg, guarding celebrities like Michael Jackson and the king and queen of Malaysia.
Seven years ago Nell, 43, who is also a Pentecostal pastor, chose East London as the place to reinvent himself and decided to go back to what he calls his "scaley” roots.
"I have always loved reptiles – so I decided to turn it into a business,” said the avid snake collector and breeder, whose first catch at the age of 10 was a venomous rinkhals.
"I caught it and didn’t know what it was so I took it home and put it in a milk bottle, but it escaped while I was at school and landed up in the domestic’s room which made my mother very mad.”
Nell now has an impressive collection of about 1 000 reptiles of up to 150 different species, many of them rare, including a pair of the world’s largest venomous snakes, the king cobra, a white-lipped python, a green Burmese python and some of the biggest boa constrictors in the world, including the extremely rare Madagascan ground boa constrictor.
Previously kept in the suburban family homes he has occupied in Gonubie, Stirling and Nahoon, the snakes have been moved to the old Python Park on the N6 road between East London and Stutterheim where they are awaiting their state-of-the-art, R1.5-million new home.
Nell’s dream to share his extraordinary collection with the public will come true when Apex Predators opens for business at the beginning of next month.
Visitors will be able to see all manner of exotic and rare snakes, including his much prized Mojave ball python.
"Ball pythons are the biggest selling investment animal in the world, but there is a bigger value on so-called ‘designer morphs’ which means they have been bred to have colours like greens and blues and different patterns.
"I am the first person in the Eastern Cape to produce a morph (mutated) ball python,” said Nell, who once sold a Mojave ball python for a whopping R25 000.
But his biggest success has been creating a house snake like no other which he has called the butter house snake. Instead of the brown house snake everyone is familiar with, Nell’s special breeding project has produced a butter-yellow house snake and a lumo house snake.
"I have produced the first butter and lumo house snakes in the world and I own the genetics for them.
Nell, whose collection is worth about R2-million, is one of the Eastern Cape’s biggest snake breeders and supplies pet shops and zoos nationwide.
Education and conservation are key to his interest in these slithery creatures which he feels have been "overlooked” in terms of research and understanding.
"There is still so much to learn about them. There is a lot of value in snakes that has not been tapped into – for instance,
small amounts of a boomslang’s venom can thin the blood, which can be used to treat heart conditions.”
When Apex Predator park opens there will be snake shows, an animal interaction room, a reptile pet shop and an education centre.
This is a shortened version of an article that appeared in the print edition of the Weekend Post on Saturday, October 6, 2012.