Melbourne, Call (03) 98123322 to book your Snake Party!
To learn more about Snake Parties, click here.
To learn about the history of Snake Parties, read the account that follows:
In the late 1960's The Snakeman Raymond Hoser invented Snake Parties.
The name came from the idea of bringing tons of snakes to a kids birthday party, for the children to get hands on and hold them.
These soon evolved to become full-blown wildlife parties and then the so-called reptile party.
Since then he has registered the trademarks for reptile party and reptile parties, involving all sorts of critters and in all configurations.
The whole concept has come a long, long, way since then.
Initially, Raymond Hoser and his reptile collection were a curiosity piece among friends and others who would come to his home to see them.
Raymond was more into the science of the animals that dealing with other people, but his parents were regularly entertainers of friends and invariably everyone would want to see the animals.
Rather than wait for this to happen, Raymond would simply take the animals to the party, do his show and tell, and then get back to what he had to do.
From there the 15 minute "show and tell" with the snakes as the centrepiece expanded and then word-of-mouth did the rest.
The show extended to an hour or more.
Strangers and other people were more than happy to pay to have Raymond take time out and do what soon became known as the reptile party.
Raymond Hoser's activities were effectively outlawed in the 1970's, as the government-run and owned zoos saw a potential break in their monopoly of the wildlife space.
They wanted people to come to the zoo and spend their money there instead.
The idea of a mobile zoo eating into their lucrative profits was something they had to stop and which they succeeded in.
Raymond fought against the government's banning of private ownership of wildlife in Australia for two decades and got nowhere.
The government run zoos, like Taronga in Sydney and the Melbourne Zoo in Melbourne (known as Zoos Victoria) were way too powerful.
That was until in 1993, when Raymond Hoser dropped a so-calle corve ball and he published the best-selling book, Smuggled: The Underground Trade in Australia's Wildlife.
It exposed the rotten underbelly of the Australian wildlife trade, corruption in State Willdife departments and all the animal abuse and cruelty going on in their own zoos businesses.
True to form the Australian government had the book banned, got police to raid bookshops and seized all copies of the books.
On instructions copies were destroyed and the media was gagged from reporting the story.
The state controlled media, including the Murdoch Press, who only reports what the government wants them to, refused to report the story of the corruption book that was banned.
Were it not for the corageous efforts of a veteran investigative journalist, Fia Cumming, this story would have gone no further and nothing would have changed.
Employed at the notorious Murdoch owned News Corporation, stories show wrote about corruption were censored and banned (they say spiked in the trade) and her sub-editors, better known as government-assisting censors made sure none of her stories about full-blown corruption ever got printed.
Aware of this, Fia Cumming decided to sabotage the system and get the story of the banning of the book run when the censor wasn't looking.
After planning in line with a covert military operation, her story ran on the front page of all the Murdoch rags on a Sunday in mid 1993, a media frenzy followed and next thing you know, the Australian government through the environment minister at the time (Chris Hartcher) was forced to apologise for the government's fascist behaviour.
He then was forced under duress and effectively kicking and screaming to direct that the book be formally "unbanned".
Police were directed to go back to policing, but as we know, not much that is done, because a lot of cops prefer to deal illicit drugs and do other things that make them more cash.
The book Smuggled:The Underground Trade in Australia's Wildlife went on to become a best seller!
It has been republished many times since and remains an Australian classic more than a quarter of a century after it was published.
It is mandatory reading for all wildlife lovers and those with an interest in entrenched government corruption in Australia.
The book forced a rewrite of wildlife laws across Australia and for the first time in decades, private people could keep and study native wildlife without getting locked up if caught doing so.
This also meant that privately owned travelling wildlife shows could operate again.
Once it became clear that mobile wildlife displays were legal and those who did them were not going to jail, Raymond Hoser was again able to do his reptile parties.
Seizing on from ideas from others and refining them, the business plan and the nature of the reptile parties changed dramatically.
Instead of owning species that he liked, Raymond Hoser targetted those that were best suited to being handled, ease of looking after and with a wow-factor for audiences at events like kids parties and birthday party shows.
The snake party, sometimes better known as the Reptile Party for kids included crocodiles, snakes, lizards, frogs and turtles, with lots of different kinds and massive numbers at a time, so that even in a group of 30 people, everyone can hold the animals at the same time.
In Melbourne the state of Victoria, Australia, kinders, primary schools, secondary schools and even universities seized on the opportunity to have a mobile zoo come to them and so business boomed for the reptile party shows.
The concept of the travelling wildlife display for kids birthday parties has now been copied across Australia and also elsewhere, including in the UK, USA and even South Africa.
Raymond Hoser taught people in all these places, who now run successful wildlife education and reptile display businesses.
In Melbourne, reptile parties are seen most weekends and in pretty much all suburbs.
On weekdays when not at schools, kinders and the like, reptile displays can be seen at corporate events and even team building exercises for bored business people.
Occasionally Raymond Hoser will spend the day simply cleaning cages, a neccessary chore that comes with owning animals.
However most fo the time, he does this at night, because, put simply, he is too busy by day to do such things.
Did I mention that Raymond Hoser, better known as the Snakeman is also one of the world's best known wildlife conservation icons.
In terms of actual results, no one on the planet can match his score.
But when it comes to wildlife conservation, Raymond Hoser stresses that it is a team game and everyone needs to be a part of the solution.
