It’s one of the first things that most transplants to the Lowcountry have to learn: The wildlife here isn’t the same as you had up north.
Up there, you can jump into pretty much any body of water you find, safe in the knowledge that you are the biggest predator in the pond. Down here, if a lagoon, lake, or pond is big enough to hold a gator you can be certain it does, and he will not appreciate you dropping by to visit.
Up there, you can walk through the underbrush safe in the knowledge that you won’t disturb a snake as long as your leg. And even if you do come across a snake up there, its bite isn’t going to put you in the hospital. A copperhead, on the other hand, will strike you down if you step wrong around here.
Gracie, the Siamese crocodile, suns herself on a chilly day in November.
These scaly monsters are, to the uninitiated, natural hazards that one must endure to live in paradise. But to Ted Clamp, they are maybe the most intriguing parts of the scenery. His fascination with reptiles goes back to his childhood in rural Orangeburg County, catching snakes with his brother Heyward, but accelerated during a trip to Silver Springs, Florida, where Ross Allen at the Silver Springs Serpentarium would lead demonstrations and extract venom.
“When you’re a young kid, you get ideas about what you would like to do. Some people outgrow them and grow up, but I never did,” Clamp said.
Founding the Edisto Island Serpentarium in 1999, Clamp drew heavily from his experiences with Allen to create a place that balances education with pure spectacle. Inside, enclosures and pits hold an entire planet’s worth of snakes, turtles, and lizards. Painstakingly crafted to replicate their natural habitats, these enclosures let visitors peer inside the world of not just native species, but creatures from around the globe. Just outside the doors, trails wind through alligator, crocodile, and turtle ponds; tortoise enclosures; and dual pits for venomous and non-venomous snakes.
An albino Burmese python keeps a close eye on visitors from behind the glass at Edisto Island Serpentarium.
But it’s not simply a matter of seeing these animals. The goal here is to enhance your relationship with these creatures, so that in learning about how they live in the wild, you will understand them. These lessons get particularly exciting in the spring, when the weather warms up and visitors can learn about alligators while watching them feed.
“One of the things I love teaching people about alligators is that they were actually here about a million years before the dinosaurs arrived,” Clamp said. “He’s a real survivor. He’s been around a long time. Alligators are really interesting animals, and they’re almost cleaners of the wild. They take out a lot of sick and injured animals.”
CH2’s Jevon Daly and Maggie Washo get the opportunity to hold a baby alligator.
In the classic roadside attraction mold, the Edisto Island Serpentarium draws you in with the exciting promise of encountering the world’s most lethal animals. But once you’re inside, you see that there are more than just fangs and claws. There is an incredible amount of knowledge you didn’t even realize you didn’t have about the predators who share our Lowcountry home.
“The cool thing about our facility is that it’s not state-run at all. It is a private family business that was built out of a passion for teaching other people about these animals,” said Jessica Clamp, Ted’s daughter and general manager of the Serpentarium. “Everybody that comes to visit basically is helping support us to be able to care and educate people about all these creatures, and we need more support.”
A boa constrictor stretches along a long limb, putting on a show for visitors to the serpentarium.
But the mission of the Serpentarium goes beyond spectacle and education. Just as Ross Allen did before him, the elder Clamp regularly extracts the venom from his snakes and sends it off to push the frontiers of medicine.
“We send the venom to a lab that processes it to make snake bite serum, but they also use it in a great deal of research,” he said. “Venom is in demand; in fact, I just read an article in National Geographic saying that snake venom has 100 different ingredients that could be used in medicine.” He lists medications like the hypertension drug Captopril and the contortrostatin in copperhead venom that kills cancer cells. “The research goes on and on.”
Naturally, having made his living as a snake handler and gator wrangler, Clamp has seen firsthand that those fangs aren’t just for medicine. So, how many times has he been bitten?
“How about ‘too many’?” he said with a laugh. “To answer your question, I’ve been bitten four times.”
If that seems light, it’s only because Clamp counts only bites from venomous snakes. If you add in their non-venomous cousins, that number is in the hundreds. He has similar scruples about alligators. Those bites don’t count unless you give it a souvenir.
“If you still have all your digits, you’re good,” daughter Jessica said.
As their subjects are famously cold blooded, the Edisto Island Serpentarium’s offerings change by season. Currently it’s too cold for alligators to feed, but in the coming months as the mercury rises, these creatures will wake from their dens, hungry and ready to greet new guests.
“We usually tell people to check the website to see when we’re open,” Jessica said. “Generally, from spring to early fall we have the whole facility open and are running programs, and feedings begin at the end of April or sometimes into May. We generally open a few weeks prior to Easter weekend.”
As the denizens of the Edisto Island Serpentarium ready for spring, you can plan your visit by visiting edistoserpentarium.com.
