Dade County FlArchives History - Books .....Von Moser's Menagerie, Chapter 10 1965
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 April 5, 2009, 3:58 pm

Book Title: Memories Of Old Miami

CHAPTER TEN
Von Moser's Menagerie

    THE McAllister, first of the Boulevard skycraper hotels, was started in
1916. I remember the time so well on account of the trouble they had pouring the
footings and building the basement. And a titled German, Von Moser, had a little
zoo on the site near the corner of the Boulevard and Flagler Street.

    At that time Biscayne Bay came up to the east side of the Boulevard. The
area now occupied by Bayfront Park hadn't been filled.

    The steam shovel hadn't dug very deep before it hit water. When the Langford
Construction Co. tried to pump the hole dry to pour the foundation and the
walls, the water ran through the porous rock from the bay in torrents.

    Our home, the Frazure House, was in the same block, where the Columbus Hotel
now stands, and I remember hearing the noise of the powerful pump motors which
ran day and night.

    But no matter how many pumps they installed they couldn't keep ahead of the
bay. Every time the tide rose in Biscayne Bay the water in the hole rose the
same height.

    "We're going to have to wait until the dark nights of the moon, when the
tide is the lowest, to pour," I heard George W. Langford say.

    They finally finished the basement, and they did have to pour the concrete
at night.

    The war came on before the hotel was completed, and Mrs. E. C. McAllister,
the builder, had financial trouble because of inflation. Three people, Gustav
Muller, Olas Anderson and Mr. Langford, got together and put up money to finish
the hotel. It was opened in 1919.

    Mrs. McAllister, a real estate broker, was a short, stocky woman with a lot
of energy. She lived on Flagler Street where the Ponce de Leon Hotel is now
located.

    One day Mother gave me a message to take to Mrs. McAllister. I knocked on
the door and a voice inside said "Come in." When I opened the door all I saw was
a parrot sitting on his perch in a cage.

    I walked on through the hall and into the living room, and all of a sudden I
found myself looking a full-grown bobcat in the face. The cat, a pet of Billy
McAllister - I believe it had been given to him as a kitten by Billy Burdine -
raised up from the sofa where he had been snoozing and backed his ears.

    The bobcat took one jump and he was on top of the dining room table. I got
out of there in a hurry. That parrot really fooled me. It sounded exactly like
Mrs. McAllister.

    (William Burdine, son of the founder of Burdine's Department Store, lives on
a ranch in Collier County near Immokalee.)

    The bobcat story was nothing, though, compared with the story of Betty the
python, the biggest snake I ever saw.

    In those days everybody in Dade County knew that panthers and other wild
animals roamed freely in Brickell Hammock between Miami and Coconut Grove.

    But residents were hardly prepared for the news that a huge python had been
captured in the hammock.

    A newspaper article about the discovery and capture of the snake electrified
the area.

    Richard L. Rinkowitz, a reporter on the old Metropolis, interviewed the man
who captured the snake, Von Moser. Rinkowitz also found people in Coconut Grove
who had seen the python slithering through the hammock. They had not reported it
before because of the fear of being ridiculed.

    People wondered how the big snake got loose in the hammock and how it had
managed to live and grow so big.

    Von Moser theorized that it had come over on a banana boat as a little
fellow, probably hiding in a bunch of bananas, and swam ashore where it
presumably lived on rats until it grew big enough to swallow raccoons, possums,
and maybe, pigs.

    The python was kept for awhile in a cage in a vacant lot on Flagler Street,
between Burdine's Store and Rector's Cafe.

    I paid a dime to see Betty, which Von Moser promoted as the "Largest Python
in the World."

    Von Moser - we had a lot of counts, dukes and vons around Miami in those
days just as we have now-eventually took Betty to his zoo on the Boulevard.

    The German, a tall, elderly and bald man whose pate was always sunburned,
lived in a frame house on the back of the lot with an artist, Otto Siepermann.
His zoo consisted of a baboon named Bosco and three ring-tailed monkeys in a
large cage. The zoo was a favorite place for tourists to stop, including the
guests at Mr. Flagler's luxurious Royal Palm Hotel. Von Moser had a tin can
nailed to a wall under a sign inviting visitors to leave a dime.

    Sometimes the monkeys and Bosco would get out of the cage. My aunt was
visiting us one time when they escaped. She had opened the dormer window of her
room and for some reason had taken the screen out. One of the monkeys got up on
the roof and entered the room, and when my aunt entered the monkey ran out with
her scissors.

    "Hoyt," she commanded, "you go and catch that monkey and fetch me those
scissors."

    I ran out of the house and looked for the monkey. I found it sitting on top
of the three-story house, playfully working the scissors and with a spool of
white thread in its rolled-up tail. But you can bet that I didn't catch it.

    We eventually got the scissors back but I can't remember about the thread;
and we had quite a time with those monkeys before Von Moser got them back in
their cage.

    Bosco would come into the front yard and hide in a hibiscus bush. When dogs
came by he would jump out and for a moment the dogs and Bosca stood face to
face. But not for long. I've never seen anything take off like those dogs did.
They didn't know how to cope with an animal like that.

    Somebody was always playing tricks on Von Moser or on his animals. One time
Dr. Fred Sayles, the surgeon, and some friends got together and slipped Bosco a
shot of whisky as an "experiment."

    When the whisky started working Bosco began to feel like a monkey. He
decided he would take a swing on his trapeze, and so he jumped from the door of
his box in the upper part of his cage, as I often saw him do.

    But the whisky caused Bosco's judgment to be off by a couple of inches. He
missed the trapeze and fell to the ground on his face. Everybody roared as the
perplexed baboon got up uncertainly on his feet and wobbled across the cage.

    Just across First Street from where we lived - the Ferre Building stands
there now - was the home of A. E. Lewis, Dade County's school architect. He was
a rabbit fancier; and he kept the biggest Belgian hares I've ever seen.

    When we heard those rabbits pounding in their cages we knew that the monkeys
were out. I don't know how they 
got out so often; but I have a hunch that those monkeys learned how to lift the
latch on the door. They'd always head for Mr. Lewis' rabbit pens to worry the
rabbits.

    One day Von Moser came to our house out of breath.

    "Mrs. Frazure," he said in his gutteral accent, "Betty's dying. Come and put
your hand on her head and make a wish, and it will come true."

    Mother was dubious, but Von Moser explained that in Africa a native would
travel long distances in order to place his hand on the head of a dying python
and make a wish.

    So mother went with Von Moser and placed her hand on Betty's head and wished
that she and dad would soon make enough money to pay off the mortgage on the
Frazure House.

    A few days later Betty died. Sure enough, Mother and Dad made enough money
to pay off the mortgage; but I'm not at all certain of Betty's influence.

    Some years later I was at Soldier Key with the late Martin Shaw, one of the
Shaw Brothers. We were having some drinks at a little fishing shack there when
the conversation got around to Betty the python.

    It happened that R. L. Rinc (he had changed his name from Rinkowitz) was
there, and he told us the true story about Betty.

    Von Moser, he said, bought Betty in New York for $25. Betty had been
captured in Africa. The snake was in a dying condition when Von Moser bought it.
Pythons wouldn't eat in captivity, but, being reptiles, were capable of living
for several months without food.

    Rinc's story was quite a revelation to me. It explained why the white rats
and rabbits that Von Moser kept in Betty's cage always appeared so content. They
soon learned that they were quite safe.

    Whatever happened to Von Moser I never learned. He had to move off the
property with his zoo when they began clearing the site to build the McAllister
Hotel.

    Soon thereafter the United States entered World War I and hysteria gripped
the area. Von Moser was taken into custody because of his German background and
interned at Jacksonville.

    They may have interned Bosco the baboon with the aged German. Bosco
chattered in a foreign language and was at least as dangerous as Von Moser.


Additional Comments:

Extracted from:

"Memories of Old Miami"
by Hoyt Frazure as told to Nixon Smiley
Reprinted from a series of articles first appearing in Sunday Magazine of The
Miami Herald

Undated, but circa 1965


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