Miami zoo’s amnesty draws gamut of exotic animals

MIAMI – With alternately tearful goodbyes and barely contained impatience, more than 100 South Floridians surrendered their exotic animals Saturday at a zoo event designed to give owners an alternative to simply turning them loose.

The canopied plastic tables at the Miami MetroZoo became exhibits of their own as passers-by hoisted children and snapped pictures of the snakes, scorpions and turtles being handed over in laundry baskets, food storage containers and pillow cases.

Of the more than 150 pets handed over on “Exotic Pet Amnesty Day” by people who could no longer care for the beasts, all but six found new homes.

Among the more bizarre submissions were a rhino iguana, a spotted African serval cat and a coati – a raccoon-looking mammal found in South America.

“This is garden-variety stuff,” said exotic pet veterinarian Thomas Goldsmith, who examined the submissions. “This is Miami. People have sloths and leopards and God knows what else.”

Miami resident Ray Padilla, 17, came with seven snakes – Burmese pythons and Colombian boas – each in a pillow case knotted at the opening. He started collecting them as pets when he was 5 and said, simply, “No more room.”

Regulations on owning exotic pets have tightened in the past year and will continue to get stricter, said Scott Hardin, who works in the nonnative species division of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Tighter restrictions usually mean more animals are released into the wild, which can be difficult for domesticated exotic animals and harmful to others. Burmese pythons eat the already rare Key Largo wood rat; parakeets cause power failures because they nest in transformers; and iguanas consume landscape vegetation.

Months before the event, fish and wildlife workers held a drive to register adopters and start what they hope will become a statewide database.

The process wasn’t easy for some of the old owners, though. Debbie Kupferman cried as she left behind her iguana. The Port St. Lucie resident recalled her fear of the pet when her son brought it home from college. He adopted it after some drunken neighbors in his apartment complex threw it off a balcony, then handed it off to her, saying he couldn’t take care of it anymore.

She nursed it back to health – it had a bone disease – and has grown quite attached.

“I have three dogs, two cats and I’m getting older,” Kupferman said. “Somebody’s going to spend more quality time with him,” she added, wiping her eyes.