That Time When Springfield, Missouri Was Invaded by Deadly Cobras

Among the weirdest of strange Missouri tales (or should it be "tails"?), the time when Springfield, Missouri was overrun by deadly cobras is one of the most outrageous of all. It really happened almost 70 years ago.

I first saw this whopper shared on the Missouri sub-Reddit page.

As the storyteller begins, this snake mystery began on August 15, 1953 when a strange snake was found in a Missouri backyard. It wasn't like any snake authorities had seen at that time and there was a belief that it originated in an exotic pet store. The pet store denied it. It was believed to maybe be an anomaly until another snake was found. That's when the story begins to get good.

Once the second snake was killed, it was taken to a science teacher at a Springfield junior high school. He identified it as a deadly Indian cobra. The snake was carried by the pet shop, but the owner claimed all cobras were accounted for.

As the weeks that summer progressed, 2 more cobras were killed in and around Springfield. One was run over by a truck. The pet owner was eventually driven far outside of Springfield. Residents were requesting that their homes be made "cobra-proof".

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The pet owner eventually was driven away from Springfield completely. A total of a dozen cobras were killed during 1953. That ended the sightings and they thought the mystery was solved.

It wasn't until 1988 that the truth would be known. A man says that when he was a boy, he would catch snakes and trade them to the pet shop for money or goldfish. When one of the goldfish died, the boy decided to get back at the pet shop owner and opened one of his crates of snakes and turned them loose. He thought they were harmless black Indigo snakes. Instead, they were cobras which is what led to the town being overrun.

Springfield, Missouri cobra mystery solved. Nearly 70 years later, it's still one of the strangest tales (or is it "tails"?) in Missouri snake history.