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CBS 4 (Denver, Colorado) 03 May 05 What's Next Door? Tigers, Pythons, Dragons ...
Denver: The headlines are eye-catching: Cops Bag Big, Bad Cat In Harlem High-Rise Apt., Pet Tiger Euthanized After Biting Pregnant Woman, Supersized Snake Slithers Out Of Tank In 'Slick' Escape.
Wildlife and law enforcement officials say clandestine ownership of endangered and exotic animals is on the rise. News reports seem to concur:
- In 2001, Troy, Michigan police raided the home of Robert Kolosowski and found cobras, an anaconda, tarantulas, crocodiles, alligators, two dwarf caimans and a Serval and Caracal, both related to the lynx family.
- In 2002, a woman in Ontario, Canada, had 259 exotic pets seized from her townhouse. Taken in the raid were exotic, endangered and domestic animals, including a bearded dragon, Jamaican fruit bats and lemurs.
- In 2003, federal wildlife officers seized 98 snakes, many of them venomous, from a home in Firestone, Colo., after getting a tip from a snake breeder in Michigan.
- In October of 2003, Antoine Yates, 37, was arrested for reckless endangerment when it was discovered he had a 400-pound tiger and a 3-foot caiman alligator in his five-bedroom apartment in the New York suburb of Harlem.
According to Dr. Keith Roehr, Colorado's state veterinarian, the number of families owning exotic animals has nearly doubled in the past 5 years.
Ownership, though, could carry a hefty fine, and even some jail time.
Stacy Seidler found that out the hard way. The Aurora resident was found with a Nile monitor lizard, a reticulated python ("They are not nice snakes," Roehr said), two boa constrictors, an albino Burmese python and a gaboon viper.
"They [gaboon vipers] have the biggest fangs of any venomous snake in the world," Roehr said.
"I've had maybe one or two get loose," said Seidler, who kept all of the exotic pets in her spare bedroom until city officials found out. "I'm not the guy in New York who thought he could keep an alligator and a tiger in his one bedroom apartment. I'm smarter than that."
Seidler was charged with 10 counts of harboring a dangerous animal and fined. She could have gone to jail, as Colorado law bans the ownership of venomous snakes. Seidler said she will check the laws before she picks her pets in the future.
A huge number of illegal and endangered and venomous exotic animals are believed to be lurking in people's homes. If one wishes to have the biggest, most fierce reptile on the block, one need only go as far as one's computer.
A half-dozen Internet sites offer some of the most dangerous snakes in the world. Dealers often snatch the snakes directly out of the wild so they can be sold for cheap. The snakes can easily kill with their poison, and they also carry diseases. Just a few clicks, though, and that dangerous snake could be delivered to your living room within 24 hours.
"And that scares me to death, but the dealers that sell those animals basically are saying, 'Buyer beware,' " said Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald at Alameda East Veterinarian Hospital. "It's up to you [the consumer]. This animal might bite your face off, but that's your choice.
"It only takes one irresponsible keeper to lose that animal in their apartment or get bit in the wrong kind of circumstances and then you have a situation where you have legislation against keeping any reptiles," he said.
Fitzgerald said he has received occasional calls to take in exotic animals, but now the calls have started to come in on a weekly basis, and "there's no place to put them all."
State regulators said they fear owners of exotic animals may cause even more problems if they tire of the animal and let it go into the wild.
"They could introduce disease to our local wildlife, farm animals or even people," Roehr said.
The increased interest in exotic pets comes as good news to Robyn Markland, one of the most reputable breeders of healthy exotic animals in the country. Markland doesn't sell giant species nor venomous snakes.
"You're not going to be paying attention at one point and you're going to pay the price," he said of dangerous animal owners. "And for so many of those species it's a very deadly price."
In addition to state laws regarding ownership of exotic animals, cities can add their own rules. For example, Denver prohibits owning any kind of snake longer than 6 feet.
What's Next Door? Tigers, Pythons, Dragons ...