Northridge : Reptile Show Canceled, Making Some Squirm

It was supposed to be field day for the snake and horned-toad set. It didn’t work out that way.

A missing tent forced the last-minute cancellation of a reptile show this weekend at Cal State Northridge that would have raised money for the Charles Darwin Foundation, a group that breeds and helps raise the enormous turtles of the Galapagos Islands.

“I know a lot of people are upset,” said Carl J. Hutter, the show’s organizer. Hutter is a 35-year-old Granada Hills resident whose passion for reptiles and amphibians goes back to when he got his first frog at age 12. It could have been a horned toad; he’s not sure anymore.

On Friday evening, Hutter learned that the company hired to put up a large tent had backed out of the agreement. The reptiles could not stand 12 hours in the unprotected heat, Hutter said, so he called off the show.

About 40 reptile vendors, selling animals from $10 tortoises to snakes worth thousands of dollars, had been booked for the show. A veterinarian was also flown in from Texas to discuss genetics.

“Basically, there was no way to let people know it was canceled,” Hutter said. His answering machine recorded several angry messages over the weekend.

Hutter said he was trying to reschedule the event for the end of the month, depending on whether he can find another location in the West Valley.

But, one of the vendors, Alan Rojos, still spent most of the weekend with his chameleons in the Cal State Northridge parking lot where the show would have been held. At one point, he injected one of the reptiles with water, salt and sugar to rehydrate it in the heat.

Luis Taracna of Arleta had brought his five pet lizards and was able to sell one.

“We’ve had a lot of people come by,” said Rojos, who has a business importing and breeding chameleons in La Verne.

“I like doing this,” Rojos said as he plucked crickets out of a bucket to feed the chameleons. “Some guys like cars, drinking and chasing women. I do this.”