SNAKES!

March 25, 2007
By Bill Sontag
Feature Writer

The risk braved by Roy and Ruth Engeldorf is that visitors who are more frightened than enlightened will see their Outback Oasis Motel and its reptile collections in a murky light. But the Engeldorfs say they’ve never lost a customer because of their “other” business.

As the Engeldorfs run a spotlessly clean, comfortable hostelry in Sanderson, Texas, they strive to shed more light than their scaly charges shed skin. The Engeldorfs’ niche in this tiny corner of southwest Texas is to penetrate the darkness of unreasoned fears and groundless myths about snakes.

Roy and Ruth abandoned the plains of Kansas for the deserts of Texas four years ago. Long fascinated with the bountiful, wild reptiles of this state, the pair discovered Sanderson while Roy was “hunting for herps” near Comstock. Herpetology, the scientific study of reptiles, is a hobby for many, a business for some, and a career for few, but the practitioners’ commonly sought species are lumped together as “herps.”

Beyond the lumping, herpetologists flinch at unfounded generalizations about reptiles of the world. As snake handlers go, Roy is something of an anomaly. He has never been bitten by a poisonous snake or lizard. He owns quite a few – many of which are on convenient display in terraria just off the lobby of the Outback Oasis – but he feeds them without touching them.

“There’s really just no reason to pick them up,” Engeldorf said. And there’s the common sense caution Engeldorf broadcasts to hikers and curious travelers in west Texas: “Just watch where you put your hands and feet before you put them somewhere!”

What may seem to some like an odd combination of nourishing snakes and hospitality for travelers is a natural mix of business and pleasure. Fifteen rooms with cable television and wireless internet, accessorized with a patio and pond and a barbecue grill, are indeed an oasis in the middle of nowhere between Del Rio and the Big Bend region.

“Yes, the motel is doing well for us,” Ruth said. “Last year we were pretty concerned when gas prices went so high. But I thought, people still have to get up and go, and they have.” Roy found the new home in Texas when he journeyed from the couple’s home near Lawrence, Kan., to Comstock in search of snake specimens for his collection and their business, Scales & Tails Pets. He found a Comstock motel for sale, but ventured west to Sanderson, and discovered the Outback Bunkhouse. Thinking the name sounded far more rustic than the image and ambiance they had in mind, Roy and Ruth renamed the place.

The Engeldorfs are part of a Sanderson growth surge that augers well for the city’s once-declining economic health. When the Southern Pacific Railroad pulled out and closed its major roundhouse repair facility, and eventually sold out to Union Pacific, Sanderson nearly shriveled up and died. For the last three years, the Engeldorfs have hosted guests at least weekly who use the Oasis as a base of operations while house-hunting to relocate in Sanderson.

“For one thing, sewers went in,” said Ruth, explaining that the town’s conversion from individual septic tanks and wells to a municipal water/wastewater system shoved property prices to unprecedented heights. Another factor is border expansion of Homeland Security facilities, including construction underway now of a $5.2 million U.S. Border Patrol Station along U.S. Highway 90, just west of town, expected to be open for business early this summer.

Roy and Ruth have been married 16 years, but when they met over a pool table in a Kansas City bar, they both worked at separate veterinary research and supply facilities, and both had teenage daughters from previous marriages. When the family moved to Sanderson, one granddaughter, Alexa, now 15, was – in understatement – reluctant.

“She came from subject classes of 130 to the same number of kids in the entire school system,” Ruth said, chuckling at the memory, adding that the family moved from a 3,000-square-foot home on ten acres of land in Lawrence to the very modest quarters attached to the Outback Oasis office. But Alexa’s Sanderson schoolmates quickly embraced her into the fold of activities and sports, “And now she refuses to even think about moving again,” Ruth said.

The logistics of another move are daunting. Roy now cares for 85 specimens of about 30 species of reptiles, foreign and domestic. In Kansas, the family had a 1,000-square-foot basement with more than 100 specimens. Twenty of those came to Texas, the rest were sold

The front room of the Outback Oasis Motel is largely populated by native species, showing visitors the rich fauna of the Texas reptile domain. A more remote laboratory on the property contains exotics, both rare and exceedingly rare. Here, Roy keeps a refrigerator tightly stacked with plastic boxes of “hibernating” snakes, motionless and chilled with all the reptilian comfort of a dark cave.

Roy’s roots in herpetology began to grow when Adelain Baldwig, his aunt living in Ottawa, Kan. gave him a tiny book from the Golden Nature Guide series, Reptiles and Amphibians: A Guide to Familiar American Species. Millions of youngsters began interests in nature with these little gems published in Racine, Wis., but Engeldorf’s library is now enormous and sophisticated, meeting both the intellectual and business requirements of his enterprise.

“The reptile industry is a multi-billion dollar business,” Engeldorf said, emphasizing that commercial collectors make regular and frequent pilgrimages to southwest Texas. “They will come here and collect everything they can find, and take it home to breed and sell.”

But Engeldorf scoffs at the notion that collectors harm wild population densities of native reptiles. “To overharvest a species here would be nearly impossible,” Engeldorf asserted. Pointing to a Texas map, the snake hunter displayed west Texas counties – Terrell, Brewster, Pecos and Presidio – containing vast, roadless areas bounded by farm-to-market routes that afford the only opportunity for collectors to “harvest” their finds, and nearly always at night.

Thinking of Texas’ near-legendary paucity of access to public lands, Ruth showed a bit of exasperation: “This is the privatest-landed place I’ve ever been in!” Knowing of Roy’s interest and expertise, collectors often stay at the Outback Oasis. “Even a novice collector might come here to collect only one specimen for their own collection, or maybe to breed and sell,” said Engeldorf. “You hunt these just by driving the roads, knowing that they live all across these huge open areas – in the ground, in cracks and in crevices of rock.”

In the “herp” business, the Engeldorfs are nothing if not educators. They shower their attention on visitors and schoolchildren who are still impressionable enough to learn the facts and help protect – rather than recklessly destroy – snakes and lizards in wild landscapes.

Safety is paramount for Engeldorf, and even more fundamental, he says, for the uninitiated at greater risk of snakebite through inattention on Texas wildlands. “The average cost for a hospital stay for a venomous snakebite is $75,000 – and that’s before the amputation,” he said. “Antivenin costs about $1,000 per vial, and a typical bite may require four vials just to counteract the poison.”

Of the most common poisonous species in this region, Engeldorf said, “Western diamondbacks are just flat mean, really ornery.” If bitten, Engeldorf would likely burn up the pavement toward Fort Stockton, but Val Verde Regional Medical Center also maintains a supply of antivenin. About a dozen vials of Crofab, the specific antitoxin for rattlesnake venom, are available in the VVRMC pharmacy. But if Roy gets bitten by any poisonous species in his collection, Ruth has issued an ultimatum: “If you ever get bit, when you come back from the hospital the snakes will all be gone.”

“The main thing that most of us try to do is to educate people and tell them to not kill the animal when they see one,” said Roy. “If you see an animal in the wild, respect it, even if it’s a snake. I know a lot of people don’t like them, but don’t just go and wantonly kill it.”

And the Engeldorfs remain confident that their passion for reptiles and their reputations as hosts are compatible. “We have a lot of first-time customers show up here, and ask, ‘This is the place with all the snakes, isn’t it?’”