Organizers of an upcoming March 14th concert by shock-rock veteran Alice Cooper in the canton of Valais hope to help raise funds for a cold-blooded cause.

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Cooper, a 65-year-old American musician, is set to appear at the Caprices Festival at the mountain resort of Crans-Montana.

When organizers of the music festival learned that he needed a boa constrictor — a typical prop in his theatrically scary show — they contacted the Lausanne-based Vivarium, which houses the biggest European collection of venomous reptiles open to the public.

It turns out Vivarium is in dire financial straits and threatened with closure unless it raises 250,000 francs by the end of March.

The Caprices Festival decided it could lend a helping hand and is dedicating 10 percent of the receipts from the Cooper concert to the reptile centre, Le Matin reported online on Thursday.

The festival last week announced on its website Cooper, born Vincent Damon Furnier, as a headline replacement for the English duo The Kills, who were forced to cancel their appearance for medical reasons.

The festival said that festival goers who bought tickets for The Kills could have them reimbursed until March 8.

Meanwhile, people interested in making a donation to the Vivarium    can do so by making a payment at Swiss Post outlets on the reptile centre’s PostFinance account: Fondation du Vivavarium de Lausanne, Chemin de Boissonnet 82, 1010 Lausanne, IBAN CH30 0900 0000 1726 2022 4.