Many people may choose to avoid a 14-foot albino Burmese python, but for Tony Lee, the snake is a personal house pet.
“This snake has the ability to constrict around my chest and crush me,” said Lee, the owner and general manager of Pet Zone in Yorktown. “It’s a huge snake, and it deserves respect and understanding.”
Lee is one of the minds behind the Hampton Roads Exotic Pet Expo, which displays and educates people about reptiles and other exotic animals like scorpions. The show happens about every three months, and usually about 1,500 people come to check out the scaley, unique and oddly cute animals, Lee said.
Getting scaley
Pet Zone didn’t start out dealing in the odd and exotic, though. Lee originally began working with fish, doing maintenance for aquariums. His first business was an aquatics store that he had hoped would be a hit in the community, but it didn’t quite take off like he wanted. But he knew that he still wanted to work with animals.
“I love animals, and I always have,” Lee said. “They matter because we’re alive, and so are they.’
Lee’s interest changed in 2009, when a 9-year-old boy came into the store and showed his pet snakes to Lee. After doing research, Lee found that snakes are part of a $4.2 billion industry, and he started attending reptile shows across the country.
Lee and co-owner Felicia Fitzhugh opened the store at 4318 George Washington Memorial Highway last summer, and the pets have become so popular that the store will be moving to a larger space a few doors down in August.
Lee and Fitzhugh travel to shows 50 weekends out of the year selling different reptiles and educating the public on proper care. In 2011, Lee started his own exotic pet show in Hampton Roads, which returns this weekend with 60 vendors.
Saving animals through education
One of the vendors that frequents the show is Viper Inc., a nonprofit in Hampton Roads that rescues and rehabilitates reptiles in the area.
The organization takes in an average of 20 reptiles at a time, ranging from boas to alligators, and helps to get them into a healthy state before finding a new home for them, said Hunter Jenkins, treasurer for the organization.
At the pet shows, members of the organization usually give seminars that teach about proper care and maintenance of reptiles.
“A lot of people just go out and buy these pets without doing the research,” Jenkins said. “That’s how they end up with us sometimes. They come in with all sorts of issues because people don’t understand what they’re getting themselves into.”
Reptile people
All of the members of Viper are volunteers with full time jobs and families. But they take the time to care for these animals because they love them.
“I love these animals because they’re creatures that most people forget about,” Jenkins said.
For Lee, the dedication for these animals goes beyond simply selling them. Lee has 225 personal pets, most of which are snakes.
After the store closes each day, he spends around four extra hours checking on and taking care of each individual snake.
But his interest goes even further as he studies the genetics of snakes and breeds them. Lee has his own temperature-controlled breeding room that houses a variety of baby snakes from ball pythons to ivory bloods.
These are the animals he brings to the pet expos, where he can show off his creations like the Purple Passion snake which sells for around $4,000. The snakes are so popular that Lee has a hard time keeping them in stock.
But the money isn’t what matters most to him. He wants to make sure that each pet he sells goes to a home that will take care of it properly.
“We want people to understand that not every animal is out to eat you or hunt you,” Lee said. “They’re here to thrive, just like us.”
The Hampton Roads Exotic Pet Expo will be on Sunday from 9 a.m.- 4 p.m. at 106 N. Constitution Drive in Yorktown. Tickets are $8, and children under 3 are free.
