HANS NAGEL WRESTLED PYTHONS AT THE HOUSTON ZOO, NOW HE HAUNTS IT
FORMER HOUSTON ZOO DIRECTOR HANS NAGEL DIED AT THE PLACE HE LOVED THE MOST.
Hans Nagel was a German hired by the city of Houston in the 1920s to work at its zoo. He acted as the face of the park, wowing visitors young and old with his ability to tame wild beasts, taking animals that were unwanted and training them to awe patrons at the Houston Zoological Gardens.
Nagel, who was one of the zoo’s most colorful directors, died in 1941 under unique circumstances. And if one is inclined to believe in ghosts and the reports from zoo workers, he’s still there, albeit in a slightly diminished role on a spectral plane.
The Houston Public Library’s archives place Nagel as being born in Germany in 1892 and of Dutch ancestry. He trained at the Hagenbeck Animal Company in Germany and had already accumulated plenty of life experiences by the time he came to Texas.
He was a media sensation and was popular fodder for newsreels, according to the Houston Zoo’s official blog. His weekly lion taming shows were recommended entertainment. He once transported a bear of undetermined size all the way from Port Arthur to Houston in the backseat of his car. And he saddled and rode a zebra, winning a bet among friends that he could do it. His prize? The saddle itself.
The doctors at nearby Hermann Hospital knew the heavily-scarred Nagel well, as he was a frequent guest — from alligator bites, fallout from wrangling raccoons and monkeys and, one time, after being stepped on by a 5-ton elephant.
Caesar, a 450-pound lion, would have killed Nagel but for the quick rescue efforts of his assistants — maybe Nagel shouldn’t have agitated the animal with a pitchfork.
And according to a Chronicle report on Nagel in 1988, he fought a large python at its own game: “Pythons have murderous teeth. I grabbed him behind the head. The pressure around my neck was getting tighter and tighter. Finally, I decided to use a method of my own. I bit him,” he told a reporter about the incident.
All these hazards are why Nagel carried a pistol at his side at all times, which he also used to scare off human intruders at the zoo.
“Nagel was awarded a gold medal by the city of Houston for his heroics in saving a visitor from being mauled by the zoo’s Bengal tiger,” according to the archive. It was a visiting park official from North Dakota that was rescued from the tiger’s jaws by a shot from Nagel’s trusty 9mm Luger.
According to the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, by 1925 the zoo housed some 400 animals, and Nagel was named its director soon after. Most of the animals were caught in the wild by Nagel.
“These days we are much more conscious of the animals’ well-being, and Nagel’s style is obviously not how things are at the zoo now,” says the Houston Zoo’s Jackie Wallace.
Given Nagel’s stature in the community and role at the zoo, he was given a commission as a “special police officer” by the Houston Police Department, according to the zoo. And for a time, Nagel was Houston’s de facto wild animal catcher.
“A call required him to capture a bobcat that was roaming the banks of Buffalo Bayou near River Oaks, eating stray poodles. At other times he roped an escaped bull elk on Bissonnet and lassoed a loose lioness in Montrose,” wrote Fred Maier in 1988. Tomball residents petitioned Nagel to remove some large nuisance alligators from Dead Man’s Lake. This widely publicized expedition involved the added perils of quicksand and
“snakes as thick as your leg.”
Yes, for a period, Nagel was the toast of Houston, a thickly accented folk hero with a menagerie of beasts at his disposal. All of it was taken from him in 1929 after a dispute with officials and what some called several abuses of power.
As a Houston Zoo staffer wrote in October 2012, the story of how Nagel eventually met his end is outrageously shady by modern standards.
“Whether the revocation of the commission was the source of his conflict with the park patrol officers, the dispute festered for years and finally boiled over on a quiet Monday afternoon in November 1941,” the story goes. “Nagel confronted a park police officer who had spotted him behind a hedge in the park observing three teenagers in a parked car.”
According to witness statements, the officer asked the teens if they knew they were being watched. As Nagel emerged from the bushes, the officer directed Nagel to his patrol car for a trip downtown to discuss “whose business it was policing the park.”
When the officer attempted to handcuff the zoo manager, Nagel resisted and reached for his holstered sidearm. But the officer drew first and Nagel was felled by six shots. A grand jury later acquitted the officer, citing self-defense. At the time, it was called a “jurisdictional dispute.”
If you are one to believe in ghosts, people say Nagel is still at the zoo, his restless spirit roaming his earthly stomping grounds. Some say that at night the ghost of Nagel haunts the Houston Zoo’s commissary or the Denton A. Cooley Animal Hospital. A few reports have heard his voice late at night, no louder than a whisper. And he’s been seen standing against doorways, only to quickly disappear.
Houstonians who visit the zoo’s animals might want to keep an eye out for the zoo’s former keeper, too. That creaky door or strange voice could be Nagel welcoming you into his beloved zoo.