ARIZONA REPUBLIC (Phoenix) 11 May 05 Reptile shelter heaven for gators - Fund-raiser to help keep reptiles fed (Carol Sowers)
Scottsdale: Russ Johnson jokes that if he "had stayed in college a hair longer" he wouldn't be running a swanky reptile rescue for free in the desert of north Scottsdale.
Johnson and David Marchand, self-taught reptile experts, and a few others, came up with $20,000 of their own money four years ago and opened the non-profit Phoenix Herpetological Society in the 2-acre back yard of Marchand's north Scottsdale property.
"I think anyone who wants to live with alligators in their back yard should be drug-tested," Johnson said of Marchand and his girlfriend, Debbie Goodson.
Their guest list includes protected Gila monsters, tortoises, iguanas, seven crocodiles and plenty of box turtles.
The low-profile rescue operation made headlines in April when it took in a record 32 alligators seized near Casa Grande by Arizona Game and Fish officers.
Randy Babb, a Game and Fish spokesman, said typically the officers find two or three gators a year.
"Nothing like this," he said, "not the sheer numbers."
The gators and other critters were taken from a man trucking them to Georgia.
The state doesn't have the space to keep alligators, so the Game and Fish Department's first call after the April seizure was to Johnson.
That seizure brought the society's gator count to 50, which are all now living in secured enclosures with filtered ponds and plenty of shade.
When Johnson got the midnight call, he said the society could take the gators.
"Then I wondered if we could do it," he said.
He and Marchand, whose day job is building cabinets, spent from midnight to 7 a.m. digging ponds for their new arrivals.
"They have saved our bacon so many times," said Babb, who helped rescue the gators. "They do an incredible job."
The men also shelled out $5,700 of their own to build fences and install pond liners.
Their gator food bill doubled overnight to $56 a day. The largest gators each eat three thawed chickens every three days. The smaller ones eat up to a chicken every other day.
"No one who works here gets a paycheck," said Johnson, who retired in 1994 after he sold his trucking company.
Money is tight.
So this Saturday and Sunday, the non-profit is holding a fund-raising reptile show at Pinnacle Peak Patio in Scottsdale to recoup their costs and keep the alligators happy.
No one, for example, is going to tell Amos, the 9-foot, 400-pound female, or her smaller roommate, Lucy, that they won't be fed. The two were among 15 alligators found crammed under a bed in the truck stopped near Casa Grande last month.
Amos was happy to hiss a little for her visitors and sun poolside. Lucy wanted a snack.
She ambled over to one of several Polish roosters donated as gator food, twisted off its head, and gulped.
"They can do the same thing to a man's arm," Johnson said.
Marchand and Johnson know the danger. They have tag-teamed a couple of fighting alligators, wrestling them apart and taping their mouths.
"I'm no sprinter, but I can run fast, if an alligator is after me," Johnson said.
Arizona law doesn't allow private citizens to own alligators and crocodiles. Only zoos, educational facilities or accredited rescues can keep them in captivity.
Anyone else, Johnson said, "would have to have a low IQ or a lot of alcohol to keep alligators."
One of the society's alligators was seized from a dentist in Tucson, who kept it in his baby's nursery. A gator and croc found swimming in a backyard pond ended up at the society after Phoenix police discovered them during a drug bust.
Johnson's cellphone rings constantly with inquiries about homes for reptiles.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management wants to hire Johnson and Marchand to spend a few days stalking an alligator that has been living in Arizona near the Utah border for 19 years.
"It had been eating the carcasses of a failed ostrich farm," Johnson said. "It'll take us four or five days to find him."
Another caller from Coolidge was on his way with an injured box turtle he found alongside the road.
"Some people would have ignored it," Johnson said.
It's fairly easy to place box turtles, but it isn't as easy for alligators.
"I've tried for two years to place some alligators in zoos," Johnson said. "But nobody wants them."
The fate of the 32 seized in April is uncertain.
An investigation is still under way in the case. The driver of the truck, 38-year-old Damon Heyman of California, was ticketed for hauling alligators without a permit. Officials say the federal government may also be interested in the three endangered Mohave Desert tortoises found in the truck, which are also at the Scottsdale rescue.
Marchand is the society's tortoise expert and is glad to have them. He has dozens of his own roaming through enclosures, digging holes and munching on hay.
Goodson, Marchand's girlfriend, is used to the low-key tortoises. But the alligators are high maintenance.
She's on the road a lot, buying supplies for the gators' stylish enclosures.
"I'm not afraid of the alligators," she says, "but I only feed the babies."
Asked how her life would be without the gators, she paused for a second and said, "Simple."
Reptile shelter heaven for gators - Fund-raiser to help keep reptiles fed