The Snakebite Survivor's Club - travels among serpents by Jeremy Seal: book review

The Snakebite Survivor's Club (2001) is a fascinating read, combining a science documentary with a travelogue. Jeremy sets out on an adventure to four countries to learn more about their deadliest snakes: the eastern diamond rattlesnake of America; the taipan of Australia; the black mamba of Africa; and the Indian cobra.

The intricate descriptions of the creatures are entwined in true stories of death and survival. From the depths of herpetological literature, the serious and comic tales are entertaining, witty, and wonderfully bizarre.

My favourite tale is set in Barbee Lane, Scottsboro, Alabama in 1992 from the court transcript of a murder trial. Glenn Summerfield, a preacher and herpetologist, attempted to make his wife’s death look like suicide when she deliberately placed her hand into the diamond rattlesnake’s cage in the farmyard shed. There were seventeen snakes in the shed and it wasn’t quite so deliberate: she had a gun pointed at her head. “Too much booze and strychnine, too much suspicion, and too much plain rattlesnake venom in his blood had finally pushed him over the edge” and he wanted revenge for his wife’s suspected liaisons with other preachers. Glenn didn’t want to live with Darlene any more and he didn’t want anyone else to have her. She had to die because he was a preacher and it was a sin to divorce in Alabama. So Darlene, being a dutiful wife, moved her left hand toward the rattlesnake. After doing as her husband demanded, she did not die, and was forced to do it again.

Jeremy Seal makes his travels and stories intriguing as he not only sets the scene for the human characters, but he never neglects to include the spine-tingling descriptions and anecdotes of the main characters: the snakes. He writes as hypnotically as his obsession with the serpents and animatingly brings the deadly creatures to the readers’ chair with vivid descriptions of their colour, shape, character and intricate movements.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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