POST-DISPATCH (St Louis, Missouri) 13 August 06 Hostile takeover: Owner reclaims escaped lizard (Kim Bell)

Zane Donaho drove all night from Texas to be reunited Saturday with his lizard. But the homecoming was neither warm nor fuzzy.

The 4-foot crocodile monitor hissed wildly, then lunged at Donaho as he reached his gloved hand into the back of a crate.

"He's scared out of his mind," Donaho said.

Finally, after a 10-minute struggle, Donaho managed to corral the creature into a small plywood box he built and on Sunday will transport the lizard to his father's ranch in Texas.Advertisement

Zane Donaho, 18, hadn't seen his lizard since mid-June, when it escaped from his home in the Compton Heights neighborhood. After a few sightings by neighbors, the lizard was caught by animal control workers Aug. 4 in a mulberry tree in the 1900 block of California Avenue.

By then, Donaho had moved to live with his father in Texas. The man who cared for the lizard in the meantime, Steve Brown, of the St. Louis Herpetological Society, kept it in a fiberglass cage in the basement of his Jefferson County home.

As a foster parent of sorts, Brown fed the lizard three frozen or thawed mice every other day. A heat lamp kept its cage a toasty 125 degrees.

Brown would have preferred the lizard go to a zoo. But Donaho wouldn't go for that. He returned to Missouri on Saturday and met Brown in a strip mall parking lot in Imperial for the handoff.

Brown had kept a running tab of his expenses: $120 for boarding, transportation and food. Donaho forked over the cash. "That was plenty fair," Donaho said. "Their upkeep isn't cheap."

No St. Louis city laws prohibited the animal from being kept in a private home. Laws in the lizard's next location - Donaho's father's 200-acre ranch in Normangee, Texas - won't bar it, either. It will live there in an enclosure inside a large metal building.

"There's very few wildlife laws in Texas," said Bradley Lawrence, reptile supervisor at the Dallas Zoo. "It's a horrible idea for a pet, but if you know where to look and have enough money, people can get them."

Lawrence said the crocodile monitor is the longest lizard in the world. Longer than the Komodo dragon, the crocodile monitor can grow to 9 or 10 feet. It has teeth and claws like razors.

"A lot of people don't realize how dangerous they can be," Lawrence said. "We use two people to handle them here. And there have been a lot of bad accidents in zoos."

Donaho knows the risks. He has a one-inch scar on his right arm to prove it. Donaho was bit two weeks after getting the lizard, and he kept the bloodstained T-shirt as a reminder.

As a boy, Donaho grew fascinated by the family of lizards called monitors. He spent close to $625 (including shipping costs) to buy one over the Internet from a supplier in Florida. It arrived in January at his mother's house, wrapped in two pillowcases inside a cardboard box. "I admit, I didn't know what I was doing at first," Donaho now says.

He said he has since read more articles about the lizard and e-mailed experts as far away as Australia to learn more. One big lesson: Mesh atop the lizard's old cage wasn't sturdy enough. The lizard, which Donaho estimates at up to five pounds, muscled its way through the mesh screens in June to escape.

Donaho has no name for his creature, and he doesn't consider it a pet. "It's a captive," he said.

On Saturday, Donaho transferred the lizard from the cage in Brown's minivan to the plywood box. Donaho nailed the box shut and slipped it onto the back seat of his Jeep. His mother, Shelley Donaho, cringed, knowing she'd have to ride in the same car on their drive to Compton Heights.

"Sure that lid won't come off?" she asked, haltingly. "I think I'll hitchhike."



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