Snake breeder dedicates life to the misunderstood

When Glenn Eisel walked into his biology teacher’s class in Millard South High School and saw a boa constrictor in a glass cage, he had one thought on his mind: I could do that.

Now, at 46, Eisel breeds 100 boa constrictors snakes every year and sells them through Eisel Reptiles, his online store based out of Omaha. He also runs the Nebraska Reptile Expo, and he was the president of the Nebraska Herpetological society eight times.

For Eisel, snakes are a way of life. He balances his snakes, family life, and day job as a machinist.

His two youngest daughters and wife help with the daily chores like controlling the lighting, temperature, and bedding. Each snake gets its own cage which are stacked on top of each other in large racks of hundreds of cages in the basement. The babies are kept in different plastic boxes, also stacked. -They must always be kept in 75 to 80 degrees – temperatures with 50 percent humidity.

Eisel spends about $100 on rats every week that he feeds to the snakes. He also pays more in electricity and spends 10 hours a week working with his family to take care of them.

Moving the snakes to expos every few weeks is even trickier. The babies are put in reptile specialty cups and the adults are placed in cloth bags. Then, they are placed inside Styrofoam lined reptile boxes with heat pads.

Eisel said that he usually breaks even between selling the snakes and paying for them, but if he has extra money, he’ll buy better cages or enrichment.

“I believe that if [the snakes] earn that money, that money should be put back into them,” Eisel said at a bar in Omaha, where he was interviewed about his hobby..

Another important component to breeding snakes is genetics. Eisel catalogues all of the genetics of his snakes so that the buyers know exactly what they’re getting and so he can price them correctly.

There are 30 species of snakes in Nebraska and 50 in the United States. Ball pythons and corn snakes are the most popular species sold, but Eisel continues to specialize in boa constrictors.

Boa constrictors don’t start breeding until the December. Eisel takes care of the babies in June and July, sells them at the expo in September, and then prepares the adults to do it all again.

“Some years I’ll keep like 10 offspring, and some years I keep 20,” Eisel said. “This year I’m gonna try not to keep any. I say that every year, but it never happens.”

Paige Eisel, his 19-year-old daughter, started her own breeding company of ball pythons when she was twelve. He brought her to his expos and she began to observe how the breeders handled their ball pythons. She wanted to see if she could make ball pythons with different, pretty colors.

“I wanted to get as many as I could get my hands on,” she said.

Eisel bought her a reptile breeding book and told her she was not allowed to start breeding until she read the whole thing and could answer questions about it. Seven years later, she still has her original ball python and she said it’s her best breeder.

“I thought my dad’s reptile breeding was really cool and it made me a badass,” Paige Eisel said.

Eisel has been breeding since before his daughter was born so she grew up surrounded by snakes. She’s never been bit by one, and she’s never been afraid of them.

“If people are scared I tell them if you want to come over sometime I have ball pythons that just sit in your hand,” she said. “They’re not as bad as they seem.”

Eisel believes that his daughters are proof that the fear of snakes is a learned fear, and that people are not born that way.

“A lot of people would tell me the snake felt like a basketball and they would say it’s not slimy,” he said. “They were just real shocked, they didn’t know.”

As a kid, he caught garter snakes around the neighborhood, but never dreamed of keeping them. It wasn’t until 1992 that he got involved in a small network of reptile lovers.

“There were no books or internet,” he said. “If you had a question about keeping a reptile … you had a network of phone numbers that you would call to ask.”

At first, Eisel excitedly bred every reptile just to see if he could. He threw himself into all things snake when he joined the Nebraska Herpetological Society, a national organization for people who love reptiles. Out of the 25 years he’s been involved in the society, Eisel was an officer 20 times.

“I enjoyed it and kept going back because of friendships,” he said.

In 1992, Eisel learned of a radical idea that some cities were trying called an expo, where breeders could get together to sell their reptiles. He heard about a Reptile Expo in San Diego and checked it out with his girlfriend. When he walked in and saw tables of people just like him selling their reptiles, he had one thought on his mind: I could do this.

When he asked the Humane Society if it was legal, they told him there were no laws for or against selling reptiles in Nebraska.

And so, with the help of two other friends, Eisel started the first Nebraska Reptile Expo in 1993. They had 25 tables, 1,000 people come in, and made $3,000.

After starting the expo, Eisel tackled his next challenge, the law. Through his leadership positions in the Herpetological Society, Eisel learned that breeders could help with reptile conservation. He became a consultant on the laws in Omaha and helped pass a law in 2004 that outlawed breeders from shipping in exotic snakes from the wild. All other snakes in Omaha are legal.

“We promoted conservation through propagation,” Eisel said. “If we make captive bred reptiles, people won’t have to import species anymore.”

Eisel is especially proud of the relationship between the snake breeders and the herpetologists that the Expo strengthens. Some researches feel like breeders exploit snakes. However, the Expo donates all the money it makes to Herpetological Society which uses it to fund undergraduate research projects.

“(The society) is unique because the keepers and the herpers can get along and make it work,” he said.

Reptiles gained popularity over the last few decades that people have been breeding them. According to surveys by the American Pet Product Association, 5 percent of U.S households own reptile pets. The American Veterinary Medical Foundation reported that there were 1.2 million pet snakes in America in 2012.

Phil Goss, the president of the United States Association of Reptile Keepers, said that reptile breeding has become more popular for several reasons. For people with allergies, snakes are a good alternative that can still get interaction. They also do not require much care and there are nice products available for them.

Goss explained why people chose to breed reptiles,

“Usually the story reflects an experience with reptiles at a young age,” he said. “Something about reptiles ignited fascination and interest.”

Goss deals with lawmakers all the time who attempt to put more regulation on keeping reptiles.

In the future, Eisel hopes that his daughters continue his legacy and run the Expo for him. Recently, he dealt with lawmakers in a county in another state who wanted to ban all amphibians because they thought they were all venomous.

“The simple truth is that lawmakers are not educated on reptiles and often get misinformation form the internet and animal rights groups who do not want to see any animals kept as pets,” he said.

Goss said that every breeder is also a conservationist because they help others become aware of the reptiles and allow them to appreciate them.

“Reptiles, as well the people who keep them, really are extremely misunderstood,” he said.

Eisel has dedicated his life to caring for snakes and raising his children to love something that others may be too scared to.

“I hope my kids continue on with it,” Eisel said. “I could probably do it another 10 more years. It’s a lot of work, but I love it.”