ROMULUS WHITAKER
Romulus Whitaker is a name synonymous with herpetology. You won’t get far into the hobby or the profession without hearing his name. Rom is best known the world over for his work with king cobras and crocodilians, most especially, gharials. You may have heard of a little place called the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust Centre that Rom founded, located on the southeast coast of India. http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/india_map.html
Not only is Rom at the top of my “Hero” list, he took the time to live in Wyoming and attend the University of Wyoming (we just won’t mention that he completed his Bachelor’s Degree in San Diego, eh um, or maybe we will). You all know that Wyoming is my home state, so this is a point that was easy for me to connect with Rom on. Obviously, a man of high culture!
His well-known film "King Cobra" produced for the National Geographic Channel, won many awards including an Emmy Award for Outstanding News and Documentary Program Achievement in 1998. Not to be overlooked, however, this film was also nominated for the Best Cinematography Award at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival in 1997!
You can find a plethora of information surrounding Rom’s work. Many articles and shows have been produced about Romulus Whitaker and his contributions to the world of herpetology. If you have never had the extreme pleasure of speaking with Rom, reading his published work or visiting the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust Centre, let me introduce you to this amazing man. I want you to know not just his work, but the man behind the work.
It’s warm outside and very sunny. Cobalt blue (incidentally, Rom’s favorite color, though he admits he is color blind) skies are overhead without a hint of a cloud. The sounds of solemn geese honking and dogs barking in excitement fill the air. It’s very warm, but the whisper of a breeze gently tugs at our hair and flows over our skin to cool us off as we sit in the welcome shade of one of the thousands of trees in the jungle brush surrounding the farm Rom and his partner, Janaki Lenin, call home.
Pull up a pillow, sit down with us, get comfortable and let Romulus Whitaker tell you his story.
Rom is a (very) handsome, (ordinarily) gentle, (exceedingly) intelligent, (extremely) well-spoken member of “The Family” who always carries himself with (multi-faceted) grace. Rom has a fantastic sense of humor and a love of colorful wording (both in English and in Tamil, the local language in his adopted state, Tamil Nadu, India—look at a map, Americans). I think he likes the shock value. He is one of the few people who can make me blush and laugh at the same time. There is never a question too small for Rom and he provides answers in easy-to-understand ways. If you are lucky, you get a little sarcasm and irony thrown in for flavor. The love for his career, the profession, the animals and India come through in all that Rom does.

Rom is dear to me not just because he is a herp hero, or because he spent time in Wyoming, but on a highly personal level within “The Family” because we share a unique genetic make-up and a unique place among native “tribes.” Rom carries a strong Viking appearance, coming from his Swedish genetics, just as I carry the coloring of my maternal Scottish/Viking ancestry. In and of itself this is no fascinating point, but when you discover the similar position we each occupy among Native Peoples (Rom, among Indian tribals, myself among Native Americans), it gets a lot more personal. As a matter of fact, one of the first questions I ever read surrounding Rom was: “How is he a white Indian?” That question, for obvious reasons, stuck in my mind and it happens to be the very same question Rom first asked ME.
Rom’s mind works bullet-quick. Envision the sparkle in his warm eyes, the well-earned laugh lines creasing in the corners and the slow, easy smile spreading across his face as he softly describes himself:
“Single-minded, sex, (soft) drugs, rock 'n roll, irreverence for anything organized: crime, religion, sports, academics, violence (armies and wars), politics and the like.”
In asking Rom his “official” title, that familiar sparkle in his eyes becomes shockingly bright! A sneaky glance at my hair sends a warning shiver down my spine and I find myself grinning in anticipation of his answer.
“Director, Agumbe Rainforest Research Station. Personal title? Mister, maybe? Or Dufus? I was blonde too, before my hair turned white, and I'm half Scandihooligan ('squarehead' in USA racial profile parlance).”
Laughing, I boldly decide to ask Rom a direct question that I love to know about everyone: What do you want people to know about you? Rom looks directly in my eyes and says very seriously: “Well, if you are a rich philanthropist with a penchant for reptiles I want you to know that your support for our herp and people work here in India is money very well spent.” With the same serious expression, a sudden wink appears shifting into innocent doe eyes. “If you are a sexy lady you should know that my partner can be fairly dangerous, so use my undercover email i.d. to send me love letters.”
Letting that comment turn my face a lovely shade of purple and ignoring my bulging eyes and slight wheezing, Rom settles back and shift’s into a relaxed interview mode. His warm eyes miss nothing and his eagle-like focus takes in his surroundings continually. It is with this relaxed but alert image that he begins describing the first interaction he remembers with reptiles in New York state, where he was born. Though sad, it is similar to many of the memories we all have.
“I was catching bugs, spiders and creatures under rocks near streams in northern NY state at age 4 (1947) when I came upon my first snake, a Dekay's snake I think. Before I could do anything my little compatriots from the village of Hoosick pounded it to death with rocks. I collected it anyway in a mason jar and brought it back to show my ma,Doris Norden (she was a single ma) and older sis, Gail. They were pretty downcast and I guess I felt pretty bad as a result. They said it would be nice to see it alive and I guess that was a pivotal moment and I never looked back: garter snakes, ribbon snakes, ring-necked snakes, milk snakes and of course Dekay's snakes were found, brought home, kept for a while in a converted aquarium (thanks to my ma) and then let go.”
I ask Rom what the first “live” reptile he remembers catching was and the reply he provides shows his quintessential humor: “One of the above mentioned snakes, probably a garter. I remember being the only one who didn't mind getting crapped and musked all over, sort of like when I got older and married and had kids to look after; their s**t was ok but another baby's s**t?Urk!” I stare at Rom for a few moments, mouth agape. Not fazed in the least, he glances at me and wiggles his eyebrows. With a deep breath, I move forward a bit in his life… but not as far forward as dealing with his kids’ diapers.
When Rom moved to India at the age of 7, it didn’t take him long to become engrossed with the wealth of animals that India offers. As a curious and intelligent youth, Rom made it his daily mission to interact with local tribals and “play” with local wildlife.“It was Natesan, Chockalingam, Rajamani and other Irula tribals who taught me snake and jungle lore like no one else could hope to.”
I laugh outright at the image I have of Rom “chasing down” his first Russell’s viper. Never let it be said that creativity is lacking in our field and now I feel I should follow in Rom’s footsteps and try his particular method of catching a venomous snake! I do NOT advise YOU to do the same, however.
“My school was a Xtian missionary school in South India and there were no particular studies in herps, only basic biology in 10th grade. However, every spare moment I had (or garnered) I was away from that school out in the hills and jungles of the Western Ghats, camping, fishing, hunting and, of course, always an eye open for snakes and lizards. I was 13 (1956) on a camp with my school mates when I found my first hot snake, a gorgeous Russell's viper and scooped it out of a lake with a friend's butterfly net and put it in my lunch box. It lived in the bio lab for a few weeks before I took it out to let it go. I don't think any of us had a real inkling about how potentially dangerous that snake was… the gods protect idiots?!”
As a young man, Rom embarked on many travels before he returned to India to make his life and his legacy. As far as his College career, Rom made an unusual decision to attend the University of Wyoming. I ask him why he chose UW: “It started when I was in my last year of high school in south India (1960) and applying for colleges the way all good graduates do. Nothing was very interesting except a course in Wildlife Management at the U. of Wy in Laramie. Reading further, it transpired that the state had more deer than people. Hmmm, thinks I, the hunting sounds good and I already read about the North and South Platte rivers and the massive trout. Well, a plane ride from Bombay to NYC to meet my long lost father, and then a Greyhound bus ride from there all the way to Laramie (money was tight) and I was a registered student in rush week. Needless to say I wasn't interested in joining a frat or any of that s**t so I rented a small cheap house out on the edge of town amongst, yep, Indians and Mexicans. I was a s**t student, and the only course that was interesting was geology. Doc McGrew was also reconstructing a giant mosasaur skeleton and gave me a job at $1.25 an hour (minimum wage then, I guess) and it was good to be chipping away at the huge fossil and listen to him talk about digs he'd been on and how great Wyoming is for this kind of stuff. Since I had been a dinosaur freak when I was a kid and knew what a paleontologist was at age five—a bone-digger-upper-- I would explain to perplexed adults (thanks to my ma taking me to the NY natural history museum numbers of times) this was a real pleasurable part of my otherwise fairly useless college experience (I managed to scrape thru one year and that's it).
But my BIG Wyoming experience was with cross-country skiing, dealing with 50 degrees below zero, hunting mulies with a single-shot .22 out of season to keep the meat locker full, saving us from having to ever buy any protein at the super market. And, of course, the camping along the North Platte and learning from my local Rawlins pal Dean Addington about foul hooking a couple of suckers when the water is turbid from melting snow. You cut the sucker into chunks and drop one below a boulder riffle on the river to tempt one of those lunker brownies to gobble that sushi. And it worked a lot of the time, we never went hungry on a camp even though all we brought with us was coffee and sugar and some of those instant Betty Crocker biscuits that do fine wrapped in tinfoil on a campfire. There's lots more, good memories mostly, except for ROTC and some particularly obnoxious fellow students--but I had little to do with the academic crowd, I preferred the outsiders and locals.”
Bringing a thought completely out of left-field and referring to the “Official” Venom Angel photo, Rom shares another memory about Wyoming:
“I was very much into bikes, too. My first was at age 16 (no license, but what the hell this is India), a Brit military Triumph 350 single with mechanical forks, i.e., no shocks (wowie, zowie on the crotch and ass on long Indian road trips, but hell, man, at 16 I was king of the road). In Wyoming I came across an ad for an AJS 500 single for sale in Casper for $150 and so me and my friend hitched from Laramie to Casper in the dead of winter, picked up the bike (it started in two or three kicks, that's how well this guy cared for it) and actually drove the sombitch back to Laramie, staying on the verge of the road the whole way because the friggin road was so icy. Cops stopped us three times, sort of dazed and confused at these two boys in mukluks and huge overcoats chugging down the highway with whiteouts and whatnot the whole way. We'd get into their toasty warm squad cars and leak our caked snow and ice all over the back seat and floor. The fuzz didn't seem to mind though, one of them even knew someone we knew in school!”
I chew on his descriptions and can clearly envision the harsh winter weather he describes. I have been through more than enough of those freezing, winter days. I am absolutely stunned that Rom braved a day like that to ride a bike! Shivering, I notice a thoughtful look come into Rom’s eyes as memories of the path he has walked surface and he artfully describes the first steps he took into the profession. With a smile, he reminiscences about some of the people integral to his path in herpetology: “In the past it was my mother, Bill Haast and vicariously it would be Raymond Ditmars and authors like Robert Ruark, Ernest Hemingway and some others. Snake hunting buddies from the '60s like Heyward Clamp, Attila Beke, Schubert Lee (who tragically killed himself with a cobra at my house in Coconut Grove) and some others helped to shape my skills.
Though my interest had always been there I only started working fulltime with reptiles when I started working for Bill Haast at the Miami Serpentarium in 1963. Besides working at the largest venom production center in the world (wow!), Bill had a small representative collection of other reptiles like the two giant tortoises, rhino iguanas, a bunch of medium sized gators and two nice big crocs, a Nile and an American, so I was getting my overall husbandry experience along with visitor PR training. I eventually did the 'tours' in a sort of trance unless there was a good looking woman I wanted to impress or someone actually asked intelligent questions. Plus, of course, there was the venom business--all which were to guide me into what was to come back home in India.
Haast was a very special influence—if he were here, his advice would be: “Work quietly and doggedly, don't react to other people and (though he wouldn't have put it that way) 'just keep on truckin'.”
I never had a herp hobby really, I've kept some snakes at home long ago, but mostly I've just worked with reptiles and my desire to keep and study them translated into setting up first a snake park and then a crocodile farm and a snake venom production center, so voila! I was able to keep THOUSANDS of reptiles not just one or two! Aside from working for Haast I made a living for a while, along with a bunch of others, catching snakes and lizards for the pet, circus, zoo and research trade. We'd go out around the U. of Miami campus with sacks over our shoulders like hippy Santa Clauses, snatching up cane toads to sell to the bio specimens trade for 50 cents each, or hit the Everglades during low water to come back with 40 or 50 moccasins to sell for venom production. Nowadays I frown on commercial trade in wild caught reptiles (probably my least favorite part of the hobby), but then there was just no negativity about it. Duh!”
Rom was drafted into the Vietnam war and served honorably for two years in the U.S. Army. In a fabulous bio that Janaki wrote for Rom, she describes Rom’s return to India after Vietnam: “After his mandatory two years, he sailed straight back to India aboard a Greek freighter. Soon after alighting at Bombay, Rom set up a snake venom extraction venture outside Bombay to supply medicine producers. On one of his field trips to Madras to buy snakes, he was introduced to the Irulas, the tribal snake catchers. Rom moved his operation to Madras city and formally started India's first reptile zoo, the Madras Snake Park. Its novelty value drew lots of tourists, celebrities and dedicated young volunteers. Rom became a familiar figure in this conservative city. With a sand boa coiled through his wild white hair, and his loudly colored hippie clothes, people gawked at Rom as he pulled up on his motorbike. And to everyone's amazement he swore in Tamil, the local language! That was enough for Rom to be "IN".”
Loving hearing his vibrant memories about the people that influenced him, I ask Rom to recall a memory he loves about herping and about “The Family.” “I guess it's hard to pick out one favorite memory. Was it when I did a football dive after a disappearing black tail in the rainforest only to have a king cobra rise over me (yes, I let the tail go quick-smart), or watching a male mugger chase the female crocs away and carefully excavate a nest and carry the hatchlings to the water, or stumble on a six foot long eastern diamondback rattlesnake in the Everglades? Shucks, which one?
“The Family, I guess my favorite social experience (since my partner and I are virtual hermits out here on our farm) was going to the Daytona Beach Reptile Expo and meeting many old and new friends in the reptile world. Or maybe it was one day when I was turning over a log in the high hills of South India and came up with a literal handful of shieldtailed snakes and lo and behold a car stops nearby and out steps herp legend emeritus Carl Gans, grinning like the Cheshire cat!”
His analogy of the Cheshire Cat leads my thoughts to several of my own memories. If you know me, you know I scare myself on a regular basis (most of the time it doesn’t even involve animals) and it always makes me feel better to know that Hero’s have moments of fear as well. I ask Rom, with great anticipation, to tell me about a moment he felt real fear. Rom nods and glances at the sky. After a few moments he recalls: “A few of them: going blind after the bite of a green rock rattler, getting grabbed on both hands by a mugger croc, getting nailed by a fast black snake outside of Darwin Australia, whilst stupidly helping it cross a busy highway-- chased it, caught it so I could make sure it wasn't something I was going to die of real fast--it was a black whipsnake, Demansia atra, no sweat (errr...). Or almost drowning swimming across a croc lake in south India? Or again almost drowning when caught in a storm on the Massingir Reservoir in Mozambique on a croc survey. Or.....” My eyes wide, sitting in rapt attention, I digest his descriptions and find that his moments far exceed my own. I recall a time I had a moment with a 20 foot tiger retic on camera, and share this with Rom. Shaking his head and laughing, Rom quickly sits up and with bright eyes full of mischief describes one of his own on-camera incidents.
(to be continued!)