Photo by Ella Testin
As a 6-year-old, Cooper Sallade loved exploring the James River after school with his dad. He’d watch kayakers navigating the rapids, and he’d catch snakes and put them in jars under his bed.
“I was always enthralled with what [kayakers] were doing and how I could get to the places in the park system no one else could get to,” he says.
Twenty years later, Sallade is a third-year biology student at Virginia Commonwealth University, a competitive kayaker — and he still catches snakes.
Cooper Sallade’s collection includes a Gila monster. (Photo by Ella Testin)
Sallade has traveled to Mexico, British Columbia and other far-flung places for kayaking competitions, and he’s a sponsored athlete for Dagger Kayaks and Galasport.
“It’s probably why I’m still in school — ‘cause I spend so much time traveling for kayaking,” he says.
When he’s not attending classes or training for competitions, Sallade looks after the snake collection he’s been building since his youth. At age 12, he caught a copperhead and kept it as his pet for the summer, and by ninth grade, he had over 100 in his room.
A Collett’s snake (Photo by Ella Testin)
Today, his collection comprises more than 150 snakes from around the world. His favorite — and also his rarest — is the highly venomous black mamba snake from sub-Saharan Africa. He found it when he was in Uganda for a kayaking competition and caught it himself.
Sallade keeps his snakes in both his Richmond home and in aquariums in a separate building in the Lakeside area. He quarantines the newest snakes at his home to minimize the risk of spreading disease, and then moves them to his other building.
An eastern diamondback rattlesnake (Photo by Ella Testin)
Besides collecting for his own enjoyment, Sallade adopts endangered snakes to breed in captivity and release into the wild to repopulate the species. Some of them are on loan from local zoos for breeding projects.
In addition to the snakes, Sallade keeps three 100-pound snapping turtles in his home. The turtles came to live with him after they were seized during a drug bust.
“They’re sort of like my dogs,” he says. “They recognize me; I’ll tap on their pod, and they’ll stick their heads out, and I’ll give them some food. They’re awesome animals.”
