JEDDAH: With some 500 snakes in his house in Jeddah, Jalal Gharbi hopes to open soon the “first ever snake museum in the Middle East”. Gharbi, whose passion for reptiles is not limited to snakes but also extends to scorpions and crocodiles that he keeps in the same house, learned to handle snakes in India. “I was taught how to handle cobras,” he says,” and I soon came to love them and they love me.” He says the animals he keeps at home in the cages he built himself have become “part of the family”, although he has been subject to 200 snake bites in his time. “It's a perfectly normal thing for me now,” he says of his life with reptiles. “I've loved rearing snakes since I was very young when I began with small non-poisonous snakes. I used to rear them and train them in my own way, and what began as a hobby developed into a full-blown passion.” When he was slightly older he decided he wanted to learn to handle snakes the way he had seen done in Europe. “So I went to India to learn how to handle poisonous snakes like the cobra, and while I was there I learned not just about snakes but also scorpions,” he says. “I have 500 poisonous and harmless snakes in my house, 5,000 scorpions and 20 crocodiles. I also have a hyena which I keep at a farm in Taif, and I hope to set up soon the biggest snake museum in the Middle East.”
