Boy Forced Off School Bus Over Pet Lizards : Dispute: The parents of the second-grader demand that the driver be fired after stranding their son 1 1/2 miles from school.

Seven-year-old Tristan Martin was riding the bus to school, carrying three small lizards tucked away in a plastic box along with gravel, leaves and twigs--ready for show-and-tell.

But 1 1/2 miles short of Gates Elementary School in El Toro, according to Tristan’s father, the driver discovered the second-grader’s cargo, chewed him out until he began to cry and gave the Laguna Hills youth an ultimatum: leave the lizards on the side of the road or get off the bus.

Tristan, the school’s Student of the Month for May, chose the latter. So at an intersection next to two storage yards, a church and an apartment building, he got off--accompanied by two older girls who were asked by the driver to walk with him.

Outraged, Tristan’s parents are calling for the bus driver’s dismissal. The Saddleback Valley Unified School District says only that it is investigating the incident.

“There are hundreds of other things the driver could have done that would have been preferable to leaving three kids almost 2 miles from school,” Tracy Martin, the boy’s father, said Thursday about the Tuesday morning incident.

“She could have gotten the box, put it by her feet and when she got to school marched Tristan to the principal’s office and told him that there was a problem. Or she could have just taken the lizards and thrown them outside and told him to go sit down. That would have been heavy-handed, but it would have been better than what she did.”

Martin, a computer consultant, and the boy’s mother, Leslie Ball, a trial lawyer, said they want to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else’s child.

“You put your child on the bus and you expect them to be taken to school safely,” Ball said. “They could have been kidnaped or hit by a car; there is no telling what could have happened to them out there.”

Officials of the school district and Mayflower Contract Services, which employs the driver and operates the district’s buses, said an investigation is under way and they would have no immediate comment. They also would not say if the driver, whose name they would not release, will be disciplined or if there is district policy prohibiting drivers from forcing elementary-age children off buses.

“I don’t see what’s so newsworthy about this particular incident,” said Robert Cornelius, the district’s assistant superintendent of business services.

As Tristan sat on the front porch of his parents’ home Thursday playing with the lizards, he said he was confused about why he was ejected. He said he has never had a problem with any of the drivers who take him on the 7-mile, 35-minute daily trip and insists he was not being disruptive with the lizards.

“I was just showing the lizards to my friends, but they were in the cage,” Tristan said. “She (the driver) didn’t even know I had them until some kid told her. She told me that no pets are allowed on the bus, but I didn’t know that. I didn’t want to leave them by the road because somebody would take them.”

Tristan said he caught the lizards Saturday while on a hike in the San Bernardino Mountains with his parents and didn’t think there would be a problem in taking them to school because he had seen other students carrying animals, such as hamsters, on the bus. Tristan said he planned to show the 2-inch-long lizards, commonly found throughout the area in lawns and back yards, during his second-grade class’s show-and-tell session.

He said he was let off the bus about 8:50 a.m. and was not sure how to get to school, but the two older girls knew the way.

After leaving the bus, Tristan, sixth-grader Kara Ely and fifth-grader Maryam Mansouri began their 30-minute walk to school. They passed a busy shopping center, crossed Muirlands Boulevard--a heavily traveled, four-lane street in El Toro--and cut through a park before arriving at Gates Elementary, tired but safe.

Maryam said she had never before seen another student forced off the bus.

“He’s just a little kid,” the 11-year-old said. “Anything could have happened to him. So the bus driver asked if anyone would walk with him, so me and Kara said we would. He could have gotten lost. He’s only in the second grade, and he didn’t know how to get to school.”

Forough Mansouri, Maryam’s mother, said she is not only angry that her child had to walk over a mile but that Maryam was made responsible for the well-being of a 7-year-old.

“I’m sure the reason she helped him was because she has a little brother that age and she is always taking care of him,” Mansouri said. “But if the bus drivers are going to do this, I don’t want her to ride the bus any more.”

Since the incident, Tristan has had trouble sleeping, cried when he was taken to school Wednesday and was scared when he saw the bus driver, his parents said. They added that they would be taking him to a psychologist.

“We want to put this behind him, that’s why we want (the driver) fired, so that he won’t have to relive this every time he sees her,” his mother said.