Python feeding drew big crowds

Diablo the Indian python came to the San Diego Zoo in 1920 courtesy of a flamboyant collector named Frank “Bring ’Em Back Alive” Buck. At 23 feet long and 200 pounds, he was a handful — many handfuls.

Nowhere was that more evident than at feeding time.

Zoo officials at the time knew very little about a python’s diet, and when Diablo went several months without eating, they grew concerned enough to try force-feeding him sausage through a hose attached to a meat grinder. He didn’t much like it.

The effort required a half-dozen men holding the snake, and not surprisingly it became a public spectacle. “It looked,” according to one written account, “as though Diablo would throw his waiters into the seal pond.”

By 1924, the feedings were drawing up to 10,000 people. Zoo officials moved them to Balboa Stadium and charged admission, a handy revenue stream at a time when the nonprofit organization was struggling for money.

“From a most necessary but unpublicized procedure, the feeding grew into an institution attended by every San Diegan in a position to do so,” an article in ZOONOOZ magazine noted.

Diablo died in 1928.