Miscellany: Apples

In Chicago’s Ravenswood Hospital was born to Mr. and Mrs. Orange Apple a daughter, christened June Apple, sister to Orange Apple Jr. (TIME, July 15, 1929).

Snakes

In Chicago’s suburban Brookfield Zoo, Acting Director Robert Bean fired Curator of Reptiles Mrs. Grace Wiley for letting a total of 19 snakes escape at various times from their cages. Among the missing: three Egyptian cobras whose bite is usually fatal, one deadly poisonous Bandy-Bandy and two mildly poisonous sand snakes. A keeper had found one sand snake when it bit him; a small boy brought in the other. Two of the cobras had been remarked by a woman visitor on top of a cage; the third was prodded out of a remote gutter with an acetylene blow torch by Director Bean who is not afraid to admit, “I am deadly afraid of snakes.” The Bandy-Bandy had completely disappeared. Mrs. Wiley had not reported any of these escapes.

Complained she: “I hate to say it and I know some persons who don’t like snakes are very nice persons but Mr. Bean was frightened and frightened persons will exaggerate. I do not feel I was guilty of carelessness. I just forgot, simply forgot, to close the door to the cobras’ cage after I cleaned it. I couldn’t do everything at once. All other snakes that got away were harmless except Bandy-Bandy and I’m sure he went down the drain pipe. The cobra,” she added affectionately, “just found the coziest place it could in the whole reptile house. If most persons were half as nice as snakes, this world would be a better place.”