They search in and along the Trinity River. Searchers walk in a line, spaced ten feet apart, beating the bushes, looking in trees and gullies and storm drain tunnels. Searchers first scour the area around the zoo in cars, on foot, in boats. 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. Blue Bonnet Bakery on Camp Bowie Boulevard sells a Pete the python coffee cake with cherries for eyes. People sell Pete the python T-shirts and Peteburgers. And he doesn’t leave footprints.Īs 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. His coloration can make him difficult to see in foliage. Pete indeed has several advantages: He can swim, he can climb. No snake in affluent Park Hill, not even a. Searchers logically begin their search in Forest Park, then in adjacent Trinity Park, even in the nearby Park Hill enclave. Where might he be? Gotta think like a serpent.
So, naturally people search for the fugitive. Zoo officials warn people not to search for the fugitive. A sound truck warns people: “There’s a dangerous snake loose.” After Pete’s escape is discovered, more than one hundred policemen rush to the zoo to clear out four thousand visitors. ( Dallas Morning News photo shows Jackson holding Pete’s head.) A python that big can crush a human. 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. The Fort Worth Press raises the alarm about the “man-killer” on the day of his escape. 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. Pete the python, along with Queen Tut the elephant and Topper the giraffe, has been a favorite attraction among zoo visitors. Yes, Pete the python has escaped from his cage at the Forest Park Zoo and has gone. 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.”īut wait! Something has gone horribly wrong: One of our pythons is missing.
As the sun rises on the morning of Saturday, September 18, it shines like a beatitude upon an America of peace and plenty.