DURANGO HERALD (Colorado) 17 August 05 Keeping reptile refuge alive not easy (Lisa Meerts-Brandsma)
Mancos: Jeff Thulin stands in a pit filled with 300 rattlesnakes. Venomous fangs surround him. Rather than run, he takes out a hook and gently prods them.
The rattling unnerves him only when he forgets to wear protective gaiters. Either way, daily visitors to his Reptile Reserve in Mancos appreciate the show.
Business is good, for now. Between May and September, about 100 viewers a day pay $5 to walk through a small indoor display and outdoor park, where the rattlesnake pit and a tortoise pit are located. Children pay $3. The reserve is closed Sundays.
But as temperatures drop, so does revenue. The snakes hibernate and Thulin shuts down, but he still has to pay for lights that keep the reptiles warm.
Besides rattlers, he houses boas, pythons and milk snakes. He has reptiles such as bearded dragons and iguanas. He has a tortoise. He keeps South African cockroaches that hiss, and warm-blooded pets including two pugs and a cat.
Occasionally he has rats, and he receives a shipment of 100 chicks per week. However, they're dinner.
Most winters, Thulin considers selling all but enough snakes to operate a traveling show. Texas could be a good circuit, he says. "Snake friendly."
Dylan Pelland, 6, left, and Brock Crawford, 8, alternate smiles and nervous grins while having photos taken with a 50-pound snake at the Reptile Reserve west of Mancos on July 14. They are holding Sampson, a 12-foot-long female albino Burmese python that's about 10 years old. She came from a Houston donor. Dylan is the son of Greg and Jenni Pelland of Pratt, Kan. Brock's parents are Chris and Laurie Crawford of Hugoton, Kan.
Schools as far away as Denver tour the Mancos reserve. Mobilized, he would come to them. He lectures about the reptiles, how to care for them and what they eat, and answers any other questions children ask. "We teach kids you don't have to kill them."
He believes the lessons are important because he often receives phone calls from people asking him to take in former pets. Some belonged to children whose parents no longer want to care for them. Others have grown to illegal lengths.
Reptiles, Thulin says, grow their entire lives, and it's against the law in Colorado to own a snake longer than 11 feet. When snakes hit that length, some owners let them loose or kill them. Others drop them at his place.
As an exhibitor, he is allowed to own the larger snakes - and does. Sampson is a 12-foot albino Burmese python.
The Reptile Reserve may be the only place in Colorado that accepts displaced snakes, Thulin says. The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and Denver Zoo don't want them, and he is unaware of any other reserves in the state.
Other times he makes house calls to remove poisonous snakes from homes.
So Thulin provides a community service and enjoys his work. Yet if the right person turned up with a check for $299,000 and wanted to continue the business, he'd probably sell. The Reptile Reserve, he notes, is less lucrative than he hoped.
"If it wasn't for locals," he says, "we'd probably shrivel up."
He modeled the business after Reptile Gardens in South Dakota, where he worked 10 years as a curator. Each year, 185,000 visitors stop through the Gardens, he says, and at $11 a head, the business seemed profitable, potentially earning $2 million a year.
Eight years ago, he fought neighbors to open the business. Now, to keep his reserve afloat, Thulin has to rely on other jobs, including delivering newspapers for The Durango Herald. He was a snake wrangler on the set of the movie "The Missing." He recently spent time in Gallup sleuthing out Western Diamondbacks and Prairie snakes from an apartment complex.
Word of mouth provides most of his business. Lorrie and Robert Hale, from Minneapolis, visited only because they saw the sign from U.S. Highway 160.
"We didn't know it was here," Mrs. Hale says. Whenever she can, she tours reserves because she likes snakes.
Thulin sees more women than men at the reserve. Dads send in the family while they fill up the gas tank, he says, even though women are more likely to scream.
His snake affair began in high school when he purchased his first python. Fun keeps him involved despite the hardships and hazards - which can be serious.
Six times snakes have bitten Thulin. Two were venomous bites, which caused flu-like symptoms for three days or more. He chooses to keep a good snake-bite kit and sleep off the venom rather than go to the emergency room, where vials of anti-venom cost $5,000 apiece and several are required to treat envenomation.
These risks don't discourage Thulin, who continually seeks ways to retain the business. Recently he has considered turning the business into a nonprofit organization. As a nonprofit, the reserve would be an education center and reptile rescue. Schools could tour the reserve for free.
"Then we can stay afloat," he says. "No problem."
Keeping reptile refuge alive not easy

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