Stolen World: A Tale of Reptiles, Smugglers, and Skulduggery [Hardcover]

I collected my first venomous snakes in 1962. Over the years our collection grew and now we have over 200 reptiles. All of them were purchased or collected legally. I personally know most of the major characters in this book and have been swindled by at least two of them. "Stolen World" is definitely nonfiction but is written in a style that is more like an interesting collection of short stories. My only regret is that the author had not contacted our facility prior to her final draft. We could put a thick layer of frosting on the horse manure cake baked by the scumbag swindling smugglers named in this book. As a matter of fact, one of these individuals pirated copyrighted photos from our website and posted the animals for sale on his own. They have defrauded several trusting individuals who they "befriended" out of their life savings with no remorse. I would like to thank the author for the exhausting research and motivation it must have taken to bring this subject into the light. Unfortunately, these individuals are still in the retail reptile market. I would recommend that anyone interested in purchasing reptiles buy and read this book. REPTILE BUYERS BEWARE!!!!

When you consider collecting as a hobby, say stamp collecting, you expect for some collectors to be informal about their collections and others to be obsessive, and you expect some collectors to be in it for love and others for money. Collecting and dealing in reptiles, however, seems to bring out the most reprehensible, venal, and (shall we say) cold-blooded traits of the participants. Those are the sorts of guys described in _Stolen World: A Tale of Reptiles, Smugglers, and Skulduggery_ (Crown Publishers) by Jennie Erin Smith. Among reptile enthusiasts, there may be some who share the attitude expressed by one character here, "I just want to play with my snakes," but such innocents are not Smith's subject. She is a freelance science reporter, and has befriended some of these smugglers, thus entering a dark world of scales, money, foolhardiness, and betrayal. She researched some of these stories for ten years, and delivers them with a deadpan humor that is just right for a bizarre and twisted subject.

There are two main characters that weave through the chapters of the book, although the supporting cast of snake geeks is colorful and distressingly antisocial. Hank Molt (what a name for a snake collector!) grew up reading tales of adventure and animal capture. Molt's usual modus operandi was to convince a gullible young snake fan (such as he himself had been, without the gullibility) to accompany him to distant lands. They would go on expeditions to, say, Madagascar or New Guinea, and hunt up specimens themselves or pay others to do so. The specimens went into crates with false bottoms, perhaps crates that otherwise contained legal imports; some specimens were put into socks or other hiding places. It seems he swindled everyone he ever dealt with, taking payments without delivering the snakes, or taking snakes without delivering payment, or libeling other dealers, or sending out illustrated lists of specimens available for purchase when no such specimens were within his grasp. There is minimal honor among these thieves. The fortunes of Tom Crutchfield, the second main character here, waxed while Molt's waned (due to age, illness, greed, and simple financial irresponsibility). Crutchfield had a background in the roadside zoos common in Florida. Unlike Molt, he was careful to treat well those he depended on for his supply; they'd get Rolex watches as gifts, for instance. His employees knew, however, that he had a rattlesnake's temper and could get explosively angry over nothing. Crutchfield got rich running Herpetofauna, Inc., which made its first million in 1986. Eventually, Crutchfield got overambitious, and federal authorities were able to bring him in, and his lawyer (a reptile buff himself) mounted a dodgy defense which included the lie that Fiji iguanas were so unendangered that in their natural habitat natives regarded them as "the chickens of the trees" and ate them. The defense also considered that the prosecution against Crutchfield was a plot by the George W. Bush administration to distract people from its abysmal environmental record. The legal proceedings involved Molt and double and triple crosses. "This isn't sour grapes," explains Molt at one point. "This is sour watermelons."

This strange story is full of funny, frightful, or bitter tales, and it takes place in the most isolated island mountains as well as in basements full of terrariums. The participants have little regard and often hearty hatred for each other, and their most cordial compliment seems to be commending one another for a love of the animals themselves. "He is an unrepentant smuggler," says a fellow smuggler about Molt, "But he loved the animals. He has a magnificent taste in herps - a gentleman's taste." The love extended to these animals is, indeed, sometimes more than just loving them for what they will bring on the market, but even with financially-inspired love, it is a shame that so many of these creatures sadly turn up battered, starved, or infected because of the collectors who love them. This may be changing some, as reptile-lovers become skilled at in-house breeding of collectable species, but that only means that the species will lose their rarity and thus at least some of their value; the next fashionably desirable specimen is out in the jungles somewhere. Readers concerned with environmental issues will be distressed, but as Smith points out, reptile smuggling is "an environmental pinprick next to the carnage wrought daily by mining, logging, and conversion of wilderness to farmland." _Stolen World_ can't be an environmental treatise, and it cannot describe in detail the colorful and exotic snakes and lizards in the trade. If you like descriptions stranger than fiction, though, of backstabbing, obsession, and greed performed on a worldwide stage by human serpents, this will do nicely.

It is amazing to me how the author was able to investigate and report so thoroughly on what amounts to the entire lives of several key figures in the exotic reptile trade of years past - Molt, Crutchfield and others. They are portrayed warts and all, and you kind of feel by the end of it that you know and have some admiration for these characters, much as you might for a crusty and unlikeable old uncle. Having been involved with exotic animals for most of my life, I have known some of these individuals and have visited the same facilities and reptile shows that the author talks about. I was never so deeply involved that I could imagine living and acting as do the stars of this book, who feel that the quest for the best and rarest makes up for extreme personal hardship, expense, and illegal acts. The net effect of these misadventures is less on conservation and more of the dark underbelly of 'pets' outside the normal companion animal area. This is a better book than Lizard King, because it focuses on only a few individuals and tells their stories as completely as anyone could. You will meet some of the same characters in 'Lizard King' but I would still give the nod to smith's book as the better treatment of this interesting area.

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