Reptile Rescue In Las Vegas Nevada
Article By Renee D. Moller

A Pizzazz Magazine Exclusive

Publisher Don Lemmon

My name is Renee` Moller, I’m 33 years old and I have a fairly boring life by most peoples standards. I don’t go to clubs to drink or dance, I don’t have wild parties at my house, the most excitement I get is normally going to the grocery store. I don’t even have more than 3 friends here in town.

My day starts at 5 a.m. every morning because my 10 year old Rottweiler needs his breakfast and insulin at specific times every day. While he’s eating, I start my coffee. While the coffee brews I start filling plates with salads and fruits that I’ve chopped, diced, sliced and shredded the night before. Time to give the dog his insulin, grab a cup of coffee and walk him outside to go potty, which is sometimes a little difficult, because my dog is almost totally blind now due to diabetes.

After leading Lestat back inside, its time to crush vitamins and sprinkle them over the salads and hand it out to the iguanas. Yes, we have more than one. At this time, we have three actually. This is what I do. Reptile rescue and rehabilitation. I take in unwanted or neglected and/or abused reptiles and rehabilitate them then adopt them out to new homes. Maybe I should have stated that before, but you have to admit, you probably didn’t see that coming!

While the iguanas eat, normally one of the snakes are awake, so while I have my coffee I take one, two, sometimes all three pythons out to cuddle with. All of the ones we have right now being 3 to 4 foot long, they’re more than a handful! After some cuddle time with them, I put them away and take one iguana at a time into the bathroom and give them baths and let them poop. I’ve trained mine to go in the tub because clean up and sanitizing a tub is easier than cleaning and sanitizing a tank! Iguana’s also normally only poo once a day. After that, its time for some free roaming and attention!

Sounds easy enough right? Well, it is…or should be. Unfortunately Iguanas are still the number one abandoned reptile. A possible reason why is how they’re “displayed” in pet stores. A number of cute little faces in a 20 gallon tank, who could resist? They don’t stay smiling OR little for long normally once you get them home tho. Without constant attention (and sometimes even with it!) they can grow (up to 6 foot!) up to be cantankerous, nippy, sometimes downright nasty and aggressive lizards.

I’ve had calls from people saying their iguana was going crazy, attacking everyone and everything in sight. The reasons vary, sometimes its as simple as a male iguana showing dominance to the rest of the family if there’s a human female ovulating or on her period, sometimes they’re just like naughty 2 year olds throwing a temper tantrum and people don’t read the signs before they end up bitten, having stitches and then calling me to come rescue THEM!

Iguanas are tricky to say the least. Iguanas are by no means all we have here in our house. My first rescue was a Savanna Monitor. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to get into rescue work because it can be so heartbreaking, when I got the call. Somehow the local police had gotten my number and called to see if I would come pick up the monitor. Apparently the man of the house (can we use the term lightly here? Or even sarcastically?) had gotten extremely drunk and was in the process of beating up on his wife when the monitor had gotten underfoot. The scene I walked into was one I will never forget. The wife battered and receiving medical attention, the husband in cuffs outside, and a terrified, horribly injured monitor in the corner, writhing in pain, hissing at everyone and everything that came near it.

After picking him up and wrapping him in a towel, I started to do a silent mental check of all I could physically see wrong with him, broken jaw was obvious, the way his front leg dangled, shattered front leg…in tears I held him to me while the police were kind enough to load his tank into my Durango, along with His heat rock (which was promptly thrown out..but hey…it was nice of them to think of it!) and a list of food the monitor was accustomed to. I looked down the list and my mouth dropped, a totally vegetarian diet, with a treat of chicken once or twice a week “because he seems to like it.” Indeed! Most carnivors DO like chicken! That explained why He was so skinny.

Monster (this is what he has become..a little begging, spoiled rotten monster!) was syringe fed for over 3 months while I gave his little jaw time to heal. Chicken baby food, mixed with pedialyte and ensure. It was a proud day for all of us when Monster became interested in wet dog food. Monster still enjoys being fork-fed dog food, but he’s now able to “hunt” pre-killed mice on his own! He’s grown to about 3 foot in length, normally they reach about 5, but I think with his horrible start on life, he may always be a little on the small side. His right front leg? Well, its still not normal by any means, and it won’t support his weight but that doesn’t stop him! He propels himself forward with his back legs and steers with his front legs. He is an inspiration and a gift. Monster will always remain with me so I can be assured he never has to go thru anything like that again.

This is just one of the heartbreaking rescues I’ve gone on. The worst one? No. The most memorable one? Possibly. And then only because it was a pivotal moment for me, I knew in my heart when I picked him up, this was what I was meant to do.

That was 3 years ago. I now get calls from the SPCA and the local shelters here to come pick up reptiles. They’re not equipped to care for them. It is expensive taking care of dogs or cats that need litter and food and vet visits, its horrendously expensive buying heat lamps, heating pads for under the tanks, UVB lights for the iguanas and other lizards, the substrate, hidey-logs, thermometers, feeding tongs, vitamins, medical gloves etc. This is to say nothing about the cost of mice, crickets, meal worms, soft-gel foods, fresh greens and veggies and electricity. Its expensive, yes. The alternative? To NOT do these things and end up with a sick and dying lizard in a very short amount of time.

Gee, it sounds like my day ends about 7 a.m. or so doesn’t it? Allow me to go continue.
I’m also the mother of 3 children, ages 15, 13 and 10 that I homeschool. About the time the reptiles are done (for the time being) the kids are meandering toward the kitchen like little zombies, ready for their breakfast. I can’t tell you how many evil glares I’ve received from asking them to get cereal for breakfast if I don’t feel like cooking. They normally can guilt me into making something by saying “the iguanas eat better than we do!”

After breakfast, time to get dressed, stand in line for the shower and get ready for school work, which lasts til about 2:30 when their friends are getting home from public school. Play time for them, more work for me. For me, that’s the time I get to sit down, check my email and reply, work on the web site and get ready to make dinner. After dinner its family time, a movie, a game of chess or just talking, sharing ideas and laughing over silly things. Fast forward a couple hours, the kids are in bed and I’m standing at the kitchen counter preparing iguana salad for the following morning. After that is done, its time to disinfect the tanks of the “free roamers” and put them to bed.

With the free roamers put to bed for the night, its time to take the pythons out and disinfect their tank. A huge monstrosity of a tank that I could easily fit my 15 year old daughter in. After the pythons it’s the Chinese water dragons tank and hot tub, both of those get a good scrubbing and disinfecting because well, Jade is kind of a slob. She loves to launch herself into her hot tub from a high branch, normally she also poo’s in there too. No matter how much I plead with her NOT to!

Monster is next, his tank is always a little hard to do because the surface can’t be slippery for him, so I have extra pieces of indoor/outdoor carpet that I can slide in there for him while I wash and disinfect the other ones.

The list of tanks goes on and on, they’re all disinfected daily, or I should say nighty. Would you like to sleep in your own poo? ICK! Me either. They deserve a clean home just as all children and animals do. Personally, I believe every living thing deserves a home, to be well fed, to be loved and made to feel special, just because they have scales does not, or should not take away that right. A lot of them are smuggled into our country (please…don’t get me started on my feelings on THIS! Most don’t survive the trip…grrrrrr) and don’t like being in captivity any more than we like them lashing out and biting us. If someone you know owns a smuggled reptile and gets bitten? They deserve it in my opinion.

Perhaps I feel this way because I’m the one metro cops call when they’ve done a drug bust or made an arrest and there are reptiles in the house, 3 a.m. and I’m on my way to go get them and bring them home, set up their tanks and get them settled in after giving them a bath. I’ve seen the reptiles people just had to have, laying in cages or tanks, filled with their own feces, lying neglected and unwanted because they are biters or not as cuddly as the person wanted. I’ve held iguanas with pierced dewlaps in my arms and cried at the abuse they’ve suffered, Desert tortoises that had holes drilled into their shells to “leash” them, or kicked by teenagers playing soccer with them, their shells smashed, their skin showing thru tinged with blood. Heartbreaking? Yes. Horribly so sometimes.

I am lucky. I have a husband who has a good job and can afford to feed all of us. The reptiles included. Things are hard sometimes, we are normal people, we get the occasional shut off notice for cable or phone bills, late notices on his truck payment etc… He’s never once complained about it tho because he also has seen the reptiles I rehabilitate and then adopt out. I don’t do this for a profit, I do it because something inside me tells me to help the ones who can’t help themselves. Most of the reptiles I adopt out are for $50. I’ve adopted out several to homes that I inspected and found to be the most caring environment one could possibly hope for and given them away. Knowing in my heart it was the right thing to do, even as I stood there in tears as they drove off to their new homes. Yes, even when I give them up to good homes, it breaks my heart, I’m just sappy like that.

There is no way to list here all the reptiles we have now and have taken care of in the past. All of them touch our lives in very different, very special ways. I can’t tell you the times I’ve laid awake at night nibbling my lip nervously, wondering what I can do to save one of the ones we have, only to have tears fill my eyes as I climb back out of bed to go cuddle the most needy at the time, hoping sheer will and love alone will bring it back from the path its on. Some things you just can’t put into words. They’re in the heart.

My day doesn’t end at 9 p.m. or 12 p.m. or sometimes even 3 a.m.
Sometimes I am still awake when its time to give Lestat his 5a.m. feeding and insulin, planning school work or still cleaning tanks, sometimes I’ve fallen asleep in the bathtub while reading when I hear the alarm go off in my room, the water cold and my fingers wrinkled, its time to get up and start the day again….and again..and again.

People tell me “you can’t save the world Renee” and my reply is always the same: Yes I can, but with few people helping me, it’ll just take me a while.

Renee` D. Moller, Las Vegas Nevada
Renees Reptile Rescue and Rehabilitation

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