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It's A Zoo Out There: Event Collects 150 Exotic Pets

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By RASHA MADKOUR, The Associated Press

Published: February 25, 2008

MIAMI - With alternately tearful goodbyes and barely contained impatience, more than 100 South Floridians surrendered their unwanted exotic animals at the Miami MetroZoo on Saturday.

The canopied plastic tables became exhibits of their own as passers-by hoisted up children and snapped pictures of the snakes, scorpions and turtles being handed over in laundry baskets, food storage containers and, in one case, pillow cases.

The Exotic Pet Amnesty Day event was designed to give owners a safer alternative to turning the critters loose. Of the more than 150 pets handed over, all but six found new homes.

Among the more bizarre submissions of the day were a rhino iguana; a spotted African serval cat; and a coatimundi, a raccoon-looking mammal found in South America.

"This is garden-variety stuff," said exotic pet veterinarian Thomas Goldsmith, who examined the submissions. "This is Miami. People have sloths and leopards and God knows what else."

Miami resident Ray Padilla, 17, came with seven snakes - Burmese pythons and Columbian boas - each in a pillow case knotted at the opening. He started collecting them as pets when he was 5 and said, simply, "No more room," and, later, "Eh, new hobby."

Regulations on owning exotic pets have tightened over the past year and will continue to get stricter, said Scott Hardin, who works in the nonnative species division of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Tighter restrictions usually mean more animals are released into the wild, which can be difficult for domesticated exotic animals and have negative effects for others. Burmese pythons eat the already rare Key Largo wood rat; parakeets cause electrical outages because they nest in transformers; iguanas consume landscape vegetation.

Months before the event, fish and wildlife workers held a drive to register adopters and start what they hope will become a statewide database.

The process wasn't easy for some of the old owners, though. Debbie Kupferman cried as she left behind her iguana. The Port St. Lucie resident recalled her fear of the pet when her son brought it home from college. He adopted it after some drunken neighbors in his apartment complex threw it off a balcony, and then handed it off to her, saying he couldn't take care of it any more.

She nursed it back to health - it had a bone disease - and has grown quite attached.

"Somebody's going to spend more quality time with him," she added, wiping her eyes.

Cooper City resident Christie Lyon - who gave up two lime green Quaker parrots - was more turned off by the pet-owning experience.

"People have no idea what they're getting into," said Lyon, who works at a pet store on weekends. Her birds would escape from their cage, so she let them fly loose in her house. But they would ram into glass doors and wreak havoc.

As workers took down information on the parrots' eating habits and temperaments, Lyon advised them: "Wherever they're going, people should know what they're getting."

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