EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE: Working with the world’s most venomous

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — Question: What do king cobras, spitting cobras, forest cobras, green mambas, gaboon and rhinoceros vipers, bushmasters and dozens of other snakes have in common?

Answer: They’ve all been caught in the field by Wilmington’s Dean Ripa in the name of research and show, long before reptile wranglers were showing off on TV.

Inside the Cape Fear Serpentarium in downtown Wilmington you’ll find things that hiss, you’ll find things that rattle and you’ll find deadly things that are Ripa’s life.

“We have, I’d have to say, the most venomous snakes on the planet,” Ripa said.

“I was bitten,” Ripa said, “by my first snake when I was 4.”

Almost 10 years later, this Wilmington native would be in intensive care because of a snake bite.

“I was bitten by a venomous snake at 13,” he said, “and I was hospitalized for two weeks.”

After getting out of the hospital, Ripa would come out more interested than ever in reptiles, though he says he wouldn’t be able to totally use his right hand for the next two years. It wasn’t long before he would find that a career was born.

“I ended up traveling throughout the world, something like 35 countries looking for snakes, and I did this for 20 years just traveling and looking for snakes,” Ripa said. “I’d send the snakes back to zoos and labs, and it became a career. (The Serpentarium) is the culmination of it because now I’m not traveling. I’m exhibiting.”

After a protective gate was put up for our safety, we stepped inside the 14-foot long king cobra exhibit.

“This snake is the only one in the world that can kill an elephant,” Ripa explained. “Elephants die within three hours of a king cobra bite.”

Despite that, Ripa says the snake doesn’t make him nervous.

“I’ve been doing this so long I don’t have any nerves left,” he said.

Should you wish to check out Ripa’s Cape Fear Serpentarium and collection of reptiles, you won’t have to endure the 12 venomous snake bites to date he says he’s survived. You just have to have an appreciation for his extraordinary lifetime of commitment to studying some of the most venomous snakes on the planet, so that we may all know more about their role in the world.

Click here for more information on the Cape Fear Serpentarium.