FAUX Tales of the Outer Banks: THE VENOM MERCHANTS OF BIRD ISLAND
THE VENOM MERCHANTS OF BIRD ISLAND
While there are many tales of the Outer Banks of North Carolina that continue to awe New Yorkers, which is not hard to do considering how different the islands of the Outer Banks are from the islands of Manhattan, nothing has sent more of a shiver down the spines of the strap hangers than how Bird Island was named.
The same would be true of Outer Bankers if they knew of the naming of Bird Island but, alas, history has never been a strong suit among the young. Or, for that matter, among the old. That’s the reason that history continues to repeat itself. If you can’t do it right the first time you’ll have plenty of opportunities to do it right the second, third and fourth time the problem appears.
“Bird Island?” many young Outer Bankers say, “Where’s that?” This is then followed by one of two other comments, the first being, “Isn’t that named after the birds that live there?” The second, rarer, comes from those who have actually looked at a map of Pamlico Sound, “Aren’t those the bird islands, in the plural?” But then they show their ignorance by re-stating the apparent, “Isn’t that named after the birds that live there?”
Actually, birds have had very little to do with the island. In fact, it would be more accurate to state that the lack of birds is why the islands were name the Bird Islands. Once again, the oddity of Outer Banks history is the root cause for the confusion.
Prior to 1941 the archipelago of islands currently referred to as the Bird Islands was unnamed. This should come as no surprise because Pamlico Sound is replete with islands which have no name. Often they come and go with the tide, which is no surprise to the mariners, and the more permanent ones gather enough sand and debris to be dry for decades. It is known that the Bird Islands have been permanent from at least as far back as the Civil War because then they were known as “the sieve.” This was because Confederate blockade runners with their shallow draft would often slip through the only slightly deeper gaps between the islands in hopes that the Union ships would being run aground in the shallow passages or give up the chase altogether. After a handful of the former the Union blockade resorted to the later.
While there have been stories that the islands were used by rum runners during Prohibition, this is unlikely even though there were warehouse appearing structures prior to the Second World War. Rum running was most profitable when the fast running, shallow draft boats took their cargo all the way to the forest-choked shoreline of mainland North Carolina. There the booty would be offloaded onto trucks and shipped to market. For the fast running bootlegging ships to stop mid-voyage on an unprotected island and waste time offloading cargo to smaller vessels where low-flying aircraft could spot them was not a reasonable activity. It is more likely that the structures were built to assist in the shrimp fisheries in the surrounding waters or as survival shacks should bad weather force smaller boasts to abandon the open waters of Pamlico Sound.
With the opening of hostilities in 1941, forward thinking personnel at the Pentagon saw a perfect location in the string of islands. Because of their isolation, the miniscule promontories with their low but dense underbrush made them ideal for the ranching of venomous snakes. This was a top priority of the South Pacific campaign for there is an old saying that the only non-venomous serpents in that part of the world are the dead ones. The miles and miles of open Pamlico Sound around the islands kept even the hardiest of species-land bound and the importation of mice and rats from a wide variety of mainland locales pleased the losing residents to no end. With mice, rats and snakes foraging freely upon and swimming between the islands, the conditions were perfect for a laboratory for serpent venom research. The abandoned structures were upgraded and outfitted with all the equipment needed for the extraction and examination of the milky serum.
The laboratory was operated around the clock during the war, the twinkling light from the enclave the only proof to travelers on the Sound that there was some manner of activity on the island. The United States Coast Guard kept inquiring minds at bay, excuse the pun, and provided the ‘room and board’ for the researchers. Because of the obvious dangers of actually living on the islands, personnel were lightered to and from the Coast Guard craft at the end of each shift. Three times every 24 hours the so-called Eight Bell Express carried personnel to and from the island. It apparently took the land lubbers a while to get the hang of the definition of bells as there was, and probably remains to this day, graffiti on the walls of the decaying structures translating the bells system of time keeping to analog.
It did not take the locals long to learn of the purpose of the island. The reason it did not take them long was because the United States Navy, in charge of the secret research facility, in its infinite wisdom, adjusted later because of the hysteria it created, deemed the project “Venom Island.” It would not have been so bad to simply and solely use the term among its own ranks. That would have been too simple. Word would have leaked at some point. But to use the term on its Purchase Orders from local grocery and hardware establishment was the kiss of death to the secret. Within an hour after the first Purchase Order hit the first place of business, the only person between Manteo and Ocracoke who did not know the purpose of the new, super-secret research facility in Pamlico Sound was a moribund shrimp fishermen who had been in a coma for two days — though it is said when the news was whispered to him by his brother there was flicker of consciousness and the gossip was passed on to Father Justine just before he, the shrimper, died.
Suffice it to say that in spite of the fact that everyone associated with Venom Island was secretive about what they were doing was in vain for the only way to keep a secret on Hatteras Island was to put it in the public library.» It was perfectly reasonable to locate a secret laboratory on a remote island in an expansive Sound and while the choice of names for the project was telling, no name would have kept the mission a secret. The fault, of course, was that of the United States Navy chose the Outer Banks. Who did the United States Navy thing they were dealing with? The Outer Bankers were the descendants of pirates, blockade runners, bootleggers, wreck plunderers and rum runners. These were the city fathers and mothers. The newer residents were land sharks, profiteers, swindlers and an odd assortment residences inter-related, inter-bred and interested in making a living on the Outer Banks so they didn’t have to go back to wherever they had come from because people such as they were not welcome to come back. It is true that a dozen missionaries had settled in the islands but their fecundity was well below that of the more colorful residents and in the end the descendants of the pious became bootleggers, land pirates and swindlers as well.
The residents of the islands, in this case, the Venom Islands, were cargoed in to avoid attracting any undue attention which, at this point, was not possible. Since no one saw any rats, mice or serpents of any variety other than the local mayors on any Navy or Coast Guard vessel, it was assumed that the residents of the island had been airlifted into the research facility. As no rats or mice of foreign derivation were ever spotted it was assumed that none had made it ashore or, if they had, been devoured by the local serpents who were indiscriminate in their choice of rats and mice. Warmth was all that was required.
The serpents were another matter.
Into the second year of the experiment — or January of 1943 if you happen to be a clock watcher — a solitary snake of the imported variety made its appearance. It had been a long and harrowing 1942 with American troops in the Pacific being beaten bloody from one end of the Pacific Theater to the other and many were wondering if it was going to be possible to beat the Japanese at all. Patriotism was running as high as pessimism and the primary topic of conversation was whether any of the heretofore unseen serpents from the Venom Islands would ever make it ashore. Although none had been spotted and every herpetologist agreed with that assessment, residents were still concerned. There were, it should be stated, 73 ½ such specialists and experts on the Outer Banks. Of these 53 were people who had actually seen a snake and 20 were those who had been bitten. The final ½ was a single individual, a dipsomaniac, who was constantly claiming he had been and was being attacked by snakes of a wide variety of colors, sizes and shapes. One morning he was treated for puncture wounds which might have been caused by a snake. The wounds, however, were too old to be conclusive. As the patient was still alive, there was no reason to administer treatment. There was no incentive to administer treatment because the victim had been self-administrating for years which might have been the reason he had survived the attack with no ill effects.
The complacency came to an end one Sunday morning when, mid-service, an Evangelical suddenly found himself face-to-face, or rather face-to-fang, with a brightly colored serpent on a shelf in his dais. He could not identify the beast because by the time he realized that he had seen a serpent, he was off the stage and halfway to the front door. His surprised congregation followed his lead and it was not until all were outside was the truth of the matter told.
Since the serpent was not local, the logical conclusion was that he was from Venom Island and, ergo, poisonous. None of the parishioners were interested in tangling with a foreign snake so they armed themselves with sticks and garden implements and surrounded the building to make sure it did not escape. The sheriff was called and when he failed to make an appearance, an individual from the Life Saving Service was ordered to investigate the premises. Everyone held their breath as the lone individual, armed only with a rake, entered the church in search of the reptile.
He had no trouble finding the organism. It was right where the pastor had first seen it. It had not moved because it could not. It was the inflated model. It had scared the pastor because he had been moving too fast to recognize the plastic nature of the organism. The rest of the congregation moved just as quickly when the inflated snake was tossed into their midst when the midshipman came out of the church.
Thereafter and to this day there has been wide speculation as to who had planted the inflated serpent in the pastor’s dais. As the Evangelical had been active in a wide variety of reform efforts ranging from sobriety to outlawing gambling, there were more suspects than residents. Every tavern owner denied having had any hand in the deception and, to a man, so did every john, card shark, rum runner and land swindler. Though suspects there were many, none could be definitively linked to the incident.
Everyone was laughing — but behind the pastor’s back.
There is nothing more powerful than laughter and it did not take long after the puffed adder incident — so named the puff adder incident because that was the species of inflatable snake as printed on its belly — before the pastor found another flock. He departed and, after the Second World War, so did the Navy. In 1957, after more than a decade of hurricanes, high tides and scores of expeditions of boys with .22s, the snakes, rats and serpents were no more. Birds returned the islands and prospered a sure sign that the island was free of all foreign species of fauna. Since the islands were technically still naval installations, no construction was allowed to occur and the laboratory and related structures fell to ruin, rubble and landfill in that order. Ironically, the only remnant of that era of Outer Banks history is the plastic adder, no longer inflatable, which lies in an archive box at the Skyco Museum where, in fact, I found it and this saga in 1965.
[This is a short story from Steven Levi’s faux history of the Outer Banks, THE VENOM MERCHANTS OF BIRD ISLAND. It is available on Kindle.]
» In Bunion Prescott’s time there were no public libraries on Hatteras Island.
