CALIFORNIA: Creeping Death

Of all her snakes, 64-year-old Grace Wiley loved the cobras best. They were the most intelligent, she thought, and the most easily tamed. "It's just that people are afraid to try to tame them. They know that you can only fail once with a king cobra."

But Grace Wiley had never been afraid, she handled her reptiles patiently and lovingly, filled one room of her Cypress, Calif, home with over a hundred of them: King and Queen, the cobras; Roxy, the nine-foot python; Perky, the water moccasin. They made her hobby, her life's study and her reputation as one of the...

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