
DATE: Thursday, July 3, 1997                TAG: 9707030166

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MARY REID BARROW, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  139 lines

PET PEEVES EXOTIC WILD ANIMALS MAY BE CUTE IN THE STORE, BUT THEY ARE LIKELY TO CAUSE PROBLEMS FOR UNPREPARED OWNERS.

VIRGINIA BEACH wildlife rehabilitator Nan McClain was in a pet store recently when a woman brought in a sick iguana and asked that it be euthanized.

McClain, a softie at heart, offered to take the lizard home to care for it instead. She took the skinny little reptile to a veterinarian, and an X-ray revealed three broken legs, probably caused by bone disease due to a lack of sunlight and calcium. The iguana also was dehydrated and malnourished.

Under McClain's care, the lizard has begun to eat, and its broken legs are mending.

Zack Cox went off one day to buy a pair of golf shoes and returned instead with two male (or so he was told) prairie dogs that captured his heart when he saw them in a Virginia Beach pet store.

His parents, Shirlene and Doug Cox, quickly realized that an aquarium was no place to keep the squirrel-like animals, which live in huge colonies in the Western Plains states, where they stay busy digging burrows and tunnels. The Coxes constructed a covered outdoor pen of galvanized wire, 4 feet high and sunk 2 feet in the ground. They piled the pen high with dirt for digging, and the prairie dogs dug in.

The animals adjusted so well to their new habitat that now the Coxes have at least four more prairie dogs. The newcomers are pups born to the two ``males'' sold to Zack Cox by the pet store.

In those tales lie a hint of the host of problems that are inherent in owning wild animals as pets. Folks don't know what they are getting into when they buy that inexpensive and interesting little critter they see in the pet store window.

Part of the issue is the number of habitat, dietary and social structure demands that owners don't know how to meet and often cannot meet, said Sharon Adams, director of the Virginia Beach Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

``It's downright cruel to buy one prairie dog,'' she said.

Another issue is the expense. A lizard like an iguana may cost $24.95 at the pet store, McClain said. It costs a lot more than that to have an animal treated by a veterinarian and more than that to set up a suitable habitat with proper lighting that provides vitamin D and a hot rock to keep the animal warm, among other necessities.

``I believe people buy them with the best intentions,'' McClain said, ``but they don't do enough research to raise them.''

Wild animals will bite too, said Gene Falls, director of the Peninsula SPCA in Newport News. ``Every one of them is eventually going to end up biting someone,'' Falls said.

Still another problem arises when the animal gets bigger. For example, a healthy iguana can live 20 years, growing 12 to 18 inches a year, and at some point, their owners no longer want them as pets. The Virginia Zoological Park in Norfolk gets calls weekly about wild animals that folks want to get rid of, said Louise Hill, the zoo's supervisor of animal services.

``Once you take an animal,'' Hill stressed, ``you really need to follow through.''

A stroke of luck brought the prairie dogs to the Coxes, who are doing their best to follow through. They had to learn a lot from trial and error, because they couldn't find much information on raising prairie dogs, Shirlene Cox said.

And now, despite their efforts, the Coxes must bear the additional $100 expense to neuter the male and also the cost of building a larger pen to house the babies.

The iguana's story was unfortunate but fairly typical. Sickly iguanas or iguanas that grow too big for their owner's taste seem to be among the wild animals most often unwanted and neglected. The Peninsula SPCA took in 150 iguanas last year, Falls said.

But iguanas are not the only exotic pets orphaned by their owners. Many wild animals go through that revolving door - into a home and back out again. Although the zoo doesn't keep statistics on calls about unwanted wild animal pets, Hill has plenty of anecdotal experience.

``We get an awful lot of calls from folks that have bought exotic pets,'' she said, ``because they are cute when they are small, and then they grow up.''

Take a common boa constrictor. The snake may be only a foot long when it's purchased in a pet store.

``They get them while they're in college,'' Hill said, ``and they get married and have a baby, and by that time, the snake is 5 to 6 feet long. Then they don't want a snake that could kill their baby.''

Burmese pythons and iguanas are the animals most likely to be brought back to Animal Jungle in Timberlake Shopping Center in Virginia Beach. That's because the animals grow so large, said Dennis McNamara, reptile room manager.

``I have to turn a lot of them away,'' he said, ``because we don't have the room for them.''

McNamara recommends books to new animal owners, and the store includes a book on the habitat of every animal it sells. He also tells customers to think ahead, warning, ``Don't think what you need right now but what you'll need in two to three years.

``You try to recommend what's best,'' he added, ``but not everybody listens.''

The zoo hasn't accepted any exotic pets at all in a long time, although they have several snakes that were once pets many years ago. It's difficult for a zoo to take an animal that was once a pet, Hill explained, because most animals raised as pets have a hard time fitting in with their own kind.

The Peninsula SPCA, which has facilities for holding wild animals, large and small, gets more than its share of orphaned exotics from across the region. ``Ninety-nine, point nine percent of the animals don't make pets,'' Falls has learned, ``and 99.9 percent of the people don't know how to take care of them.''

The Peninsula SPCA takes in everything from the current hedgehog and prairie dog fads to large cats and even an 18-foot-long, 200-pound python. Falls searches, sometimes across the nation, to find homes - from petting zoos to reptile fanciers - for the orphans.

Not all unwanted exotics find a new owner. Many die from poor care before they ever reach an animal care facility. Others are euthanized for lack of a home.

Some owners try to get rid of their pets by selling them, but there is no market for older exotics. The average they can make back is 10 cents on the dollar, Falls said.

Other owners simply set their charges free. A large monitor lizard was found roaming in Newport News not long ago, and prairie dogs have set up shop in the grassy area around a bank there, Falls said.

``Most people want exotics as status symbols,'' Hill noted, ``while dogs and cats are ignored and abandoned all over the area.'' ILLUSTRATION: NHAT MEYER COLOR PHOTOS/The Virginian-Pilot

ABOVE: Prairie dogs are popular, but they have habitat, dietary and

social structure demands that owners may not know about or be able

to meet. The little critters are inexpensive to buy, but costs soon

mount up.

RIGHT: Boa constrictors like this one help by Michael Wauhop, a

reptile keeper at Virginia Zoological Park, eventually outgrow their

place in the homes of many owners.

Photos

MARY REID BARROW

This iguana with three broken legs was brought to a pet store by an

owner who did not know how to care for it properly.

NHAT MEYER/The Virginian-Pilot