Serpent Seeks Garden of Eden
When most people think pet adoption, they think adorable.
They picture a playful ball of fluff that yips or purrs. They envision a four-legged companion that will remain loyal as long as the nummies keep coming. They dream of a pet that would slog across the continent, Lassie-style, to be reunited with a beloved owner.
Not John Holmes.
When the North Hollywood man thinks pet, he thinks cold blood and forked tongue a-flicker.
Holmes will pass on purring, thank you. He likes animals that hiss and sough. Indeed, he doesn’t seek companion animals. He prefers creatures that scare the pants off most people. You can have cuddly. Where others have fears, even phobias, Holmes has a lifelong fondness for creatures that slither and strike.
Holmes, 64, is president of the Van Nuys-based Southwestern Herpetologists Society. As such, and as an active member of the local reptile rescue squad, he is always seeking good homes for neglected and abandoned snakes, lizards and other reptiles and amphibians.
As Holmes explains, reptiles and amphibians are increasingly popular pets. “Something like 2% of the population of the United States owns a reptile. The problem is most people don’t know what they’re getting into when they get herps.” That’s reptile-lover talk for snakes and their ilk.
People often buy that rosy boa or reticulated python on impulse, then tire of it. And while almost anyone can tell you how to care for a dog or a cat, information on proper herp care is not available on every street corner or even in every pet store. (Sharing such information is part of what the society is all about, Holmes says.)
Uninformed reptile owners make mistakes that can kill their pets, from failing to provide their iguanas with enough real or artificial sunlight (necessary for proper calcium metabolism) to failing to realize that a caged reptile is often a cannier escape artist than Houdini.
Right now, for instance, Holmes is seeking the right someone to adopt three 10-foot Burmese pythons that share his one-bedroom apartment. It’s the perfect thing for someone who wants a roommate that can swallow a goat whole.
The snakes were rescued last year by the Reptile and Amphibian Rescue Network (RARN), all of whose active members, like Holmes, are also in the Southwestern Herpetologists Society.
The trio, along with a fourth big Burmese, were discovered in the closet of a Westside motel room by a maid who managed not to have a heart attack. It seems they had been abandoned by their owner, a roadie with a rock band, who had run afoul of the law.
Holmes doesn’t know much about rock groups. “I didn’t know what roadies were,” he confesses. “I thought it meant rowdies.”
But he does know snakes, and these were clearly sick. “They had pneumonia so bad, we didn’t think they were going to make it,” he recalls. The wheezing pythons were given fluid therapy and other expert care at Studio City Animal Hospital, provided at no cost by one of several vets who work with the rescue group. All four snakes recovered (no word on the maid).
Holmes has been giving the pythons foster care ever since, including feeding them a steady diet of pre-killed rabbits. (It’s more humane, for the snake as well as the rabbit. Live rabbits bite and scratch as doom enfolds them.)
The society allows only members to adopt rescued animals, and it screens applicants better than many agencies that arrange human adoptions. Applicants must complete a two-page form that probes everything from what kind of cage is available for the animal to whether the landlord will allow such pets.
“It’s designed to make people stop and think,” Holmes says. Thinking is a good thing to do before you commit to a python that’s as long as a station wagon.
As Holmes points out, those Burmese pythons are only 10 feet long now, but will probably reach 20 feet in three or four years, “and they could have respiratory problems forever.”
So far, only one prospective caretaker has passed muster--a Westminster man who uses the adopted python in outreach programs to allay people’s fears and teach them about reptiles.
These are pythons with special needs, Holmes says of his reptilian housemates. “These are not snakes we want people carrying around their necks in parks.”
Holmes and his colleagues regularly visit local animal shelters looking for lost and abandoned reptiles that need veterinary care. They arrange for their treatment, then give them foster care while waiting for an adoption.
A major need: homes for green iguanas.
The rescue squad is inundated with them. As RARN President Diane Lee explains, 2,000 green iguanas pass through LAX every week, to be sold as pets. Once purchased, the animals are often fed inadequate diets or otherwise mishandled and end up sick and abandoned.
RARN lists its hotline number--(310) 473-2030--in the Westside phone book and gets about 10 calls a week. Many confirm the view of Holmes and Lee that there is a great deal of ignorance out there in prospective pet land.
“One of our very first calls,” Lee reports, “was from someone who wanted to know if we had any armadillos available for adoption.” The caller was apparently unaware that armadillos are mammals, not reptiles or amphibians. Lee quietly threw him out of the potential adoption pool.
Holmes, Lee and their fellow herpephiles have saved snakes found in local swimming pools and lizards found in Valley storm drains. Most people recoil when they stumble upon an unexpected reptile, especially one that’s bigger than they are, and Holmes and his colleagues act quickly to protect the animals.
While this column was being written, Holmes got a call from a landlord in Hollywood who had evicted a deadbeat tenant, only to discover that he had left his 15-foot Burmese python behind. The landlord was afraid, understandably, to even touch the animal.
Not to worry, Holmes assured him: Somebody will be right over.
