Leapin’ Lizards, It’s Time To Take Bite Out Of Crime

Around here crime doesn’t get much more cold-blooded.

Fiends slithered into George Ellefsen’s Peaceful Valley home the other day and snatched three of his babies.

You won’t see these faces on any milk carton. Thank God for tiny favors.

Missing and presumed abducted were:

Jughead - a 5-foot-6 iguana Ellefsen claims is the Northwest’s heaviest at 35 pounds.

Rusty - a black and yellow 12-foot reticulated python.

And Guy - a 4-foot version of Jughead.

I’m calling on Spokane to help solve this reptilian equivalent of the Lindbergh kidnapping.

Since his sleeping bag is gone, Ellefsen figures the burglars used it as a sack to cart off their scaly victims. Also missing is a half-rack of beer, a VCR, a crossbow, a ceremonial dagger and a few other items.

Ellefsen can live with material losses.

Having his buddies wrenched from his life burns like a rattlesnake bite.

“I still have 17 lizards left,” says the morose Ellefsen, 47. “They couldn’t get them all, but they took my favorite.

“That Jughead. I’ve been through a lot with that guy. Losing him is like losing my right arm.”

Jughead already got the left arm. Rolling up his sleeve, the Peaceful Valley Lizard King displays a massive scar. It was created one day when Jughead lunged and tore out a huge piece of hide.

These reptile-nappers probably got a lot more than they bargained for.

According to Ellefsen, iguanas are the Hells Angels of the lizard community - ill-tempered and dangerous. “They bite three times harder than a pit bull. I hope Jughead takes a good chunk out of whoever took him.”

If Jughead fails to avenge his honor, Rusty sure might.

Reticulated pythons are equipped with 100 teeth, all shaped like little fish hooks. They are extremely aggressive. The snakes are so eye-blink fast they can pluck birds right out of the air.

Ellefsen is as knowledgeable as a “Wild Kingdom” special.

The trick is keeping your mind on his wisdom while being leered at by a 4-1/2-foot Cayman crocodile named Queenie. Sprawled on the living room couch, Queenie examined me the way a starving man would contemplate a burrito.

Yet Ellefsen packs Queenie around as if she were a fat house cat. “She’s a sweetheart,” he says.

This guy is definitely different.

The colors he chose for his house is your first dead giveaway. The place is purple with lilac trim and a hot pink porch. Multicolored tires dot the front yard.

It gets stranger inside. At night Ellefsen says he shares his bed with Baby, a 3-foot African Cape monitor lizard who snuggles under his armpit for warmth.

“I’ve been married and divorced three times,” adds Ellefsen, a hotel maintenance worker.

Go figure.

Ellefsen’s home is more of a menagerie than Congress. Everywhere you look something is staring back at you.

Much of the front room is taken up with a three-tiered reptile condo painted in every shade of the rainbow. In the kitchen a female iguana dozes from her perch atop the stove.

Ellefsen built a screened sun porch off the second floor to give his pets an airy place to frolic during warm summer months.

What better place for a lizard or snake to be?

That’s why we need to help him get his critters back.

“You can’t hide an iguana as big as Jughead without someone finding out about it,” he says.

Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Jughead, Rusty and Guy should call me at 459-5432 and rat out these reptile rustlers.

Only their safe return will balance the scales of justice.

, DataTimes