THE STORY OF THE SHOP

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Having emigrated as a child with his family from his native Benevento to the United States, Napoleone soon showed, as he grew up, both boldness and a peculiar business sense.
The young Italian experienced a revelation when, while talking with fellow workers of Polish and German origin, he first heard about Wolpertingers.

These rabbits bearing small deer antlers, native to eastern Old Europe, had made their way into the New World, reproducing by the thousands and diversifying into countless variants and names - among them the jackalope, the most famous among English-speaking Americans.

Unexpectedly, Napoleone felt a strange sense of familiarity with these little creatures, so far from home yet so untamed, and one of his usual wild ideas took shape. Bidding farewell to an enraged father, a tearful mother, and several brothers and sisters doubled over with laughter, a determined Napoleone immediately bought a ticket for the first ship bound for Rome. With him he carried his belongings: a couple of battered trunks and a wooden crate in which several jackalopes slept comfortably.

After a year of questionable and decidedly hair-raising expedients, the barely twenty-year-old Serpentino managed to rent a small, rustic, run-down house on the Incantavia, to which he promptly added a brand-new sign: “Il Serraglio del Cervoniglio” (The Jackalope Managerie).

With the affability of a barker, the expertise of a breeder, and a generous dose of Neapolitan charm, Napoleone succeeded in presenting his "Cervoniglios" as the exotic animals they (not entirely) were, creating a new fashion among Rome’s delighted witches. The jackalopes, for their part, adapted rather well to their new environment and multiplied so successfully as to earn their owner a small fortune. Unlike most of his contemporaries, however, Napoleone never sold his creatures as sources of reagents, but always and only as companion animals.

Within a few decades, the Serpentino family - now sharing in Napoleone’s success - began traveling across all the continents in search of unusual creatures to import into Italy, following Napoleone’s extremely strict guidelines on which species could be imported and which could not.

Business at the Menagerie continued to prosper until 1921, when a group of dark wizards blew up the shop with half of the Serpentino family inside. The surviving relatives later claimed that the attack stemmed from a refusal to supply the Fascist regime with magical animals for military purposes.

After that tragic date, the family withdrew from business until 1944, when Giasone Ruggicapra (husband of Amelia Serpentino) reopened the shop, disregarding all advice to the contrary.

Faithful to Napoleone’s spirit, the Cervoniglio Menagerie once again began providing extraordinary animal companions to those able to care for them, while also offering shelter and veterinary assistance to creatures suffering as a result of the black market and human cruelty.