Francesco Zinatelli is not any atypical 19-year-old scholar: he’s a serparo – an Italian snake charmer.
As quickly as classes are over, he rushes to the woods surrounding his native village of Cocullo, in Abruzzo, a wild and exquisite area in southern Italy. He patiently waits to listen to the grass and leaves rustle, and as quickly as he spots a snake – which may be as much as 2m lengthy – he leaps from hiding and catches it together with his naked arms.
“It’s a challenge: you need to have sharp ears and be extremely quick,” he tells i. “If I don’t manage to catch any, I come back the following day. I love them, they’re my pets, even though my arms are full of tiny snake teeth bites. Luckily for me, they’re non-venomous.”
Cocullo is legendary for its snake ritual on 1 May, when the statue of patron saint Domenico is paraded across the village, with serpents dangling from it. That helps to clarify why the village can also be a centre of excellence for snake charmers – 20 of its 200 residents are serpari.
During the ritual, locals put on snakes round their necks and in bundles on heads and round arms, stunning vacationers. It is a deeply felt historical custom handed down throughout generations and courting again to pagan occasions.
But Zinatelli goes snake-hunting all year-round. “My dad taught my sister and I to catch snakes when we were six years old,” he says. “I love being surrounded by nature. I’ve developed an instinct: I can spot their presence and I know all their hiding places and lairs.”
Last yr he caught 15 snakes. He takes them again home and retains them in a glass cage, feeding them eggs. “Once I left one in an open plastic bag. My mum started screaming and we chased the snake around the house.”
Zinatelli says he’s unhappy when he releases the snakes again into the wild on the finish of the village celebrations. The snakes at all times chew him (he says it’s like his arms are “tattooed”), however he’s wonderful with it: their enamel are smaller and fewer painful than these of a cat.
Most serpari within the village are young males. But there may be additionally an 89-year-old retiree who nonetheless charms snakes – and a few serpara ladies.
(Photo: Silvia Marchetti )
Maria Rita Zinatelli, Francesco’s sister, a 27-year-old bartender, enjoys wrapping the serpents round her physique like necklaces.
“Daddy taught me how to recognise, spot and catch them, that’s the most thrilling moment,” she says. “It’s tough walking for hours in the woods. But I’ve never been scared – serpents have always been part of our household, like a dog or cat.”
Marco Ognibene Mascioli, a 38-year-old native councillor and soldier, says he loves the adrenaline rush of a snake hunt.
“I go out on the hills by myself,” says the serparo. “My uncle taught me that there are two ways to spot a snake: they either camouflage or make jerky movements under leaves and branches, so you need sharp eyes and ears. It’s a solitary, exciting game”.
He says a serparo is aware of precisely the place the reptiles disguise as a result of a snake tends to at all times stay in a single spot, shifting round in a radius of simply 50m.
“Each year when I release mine after the festival, they make their lair there for the winter, so when the next spring comes, I know where to find them, usually bundled together in underground balls,” says Ognibene Mascioli.
“I know their habits. The best moment to catch them is when they come out of hibernation, still groggy and sluggish.”
Ognibene Mascioli, who goes snake-hunting from March to May, has by no means run right into a member of a species that would do him any hurt.
“Venomous snakes such as vipers like humidity and cold temperatures; they come out at dawn,” he says. “I avoid going snake-hunting before noon – it’s in the afternoon that the non-venomous species are around; they like the sun.”
He makes use of a glove to catch the snakes, and goes searching twice a day, with a pause for lunch in between. He says he and the opposite younger serpari are on a mission to maintain the village’s historical traditions alive now that older snake charmers are passing away.
When he was a baby and received his first bites, he admits he was scared. But then received used to the tiny enamel leaving marks on his arms.
“They call us ‘charmers’, but we are nothing of the kind. If we did charm serpents, we’d teach them not to bite us.”
