Girl Scout Leaders are always looking for a good triple play—an activity that’s fun, educational, and cheap! When I discovered the Adopt-An-Animal Program at the Columbus Zoo in the early ‘90’s, I knew that I’d found one.  Back then, our troop could adopt a mallard duck for $27 per year (which covered its food) and receive biological data for said duck, a generic picture of a mallard duck (hen, as I recall) and free admission for our whole troop and all of the parents required to drive them to the annual Adopt-A-Pet Day in July.

This was such great deal that I introduced it to all of the troops in our school district, which meant that we took around 200 girls to the Zoo each year. The behind the scenes experiences were priceless for the girls, and included a lion roaring three feet from them, watching baby lions being bottle fed, and even touching an elephant trunk! But one year in particular defined the experience for me.

Five girls from our group wanted to attend the behind the scenes tour in the Reptile House. None of my co-leaders wanted to take this tour so we merged with a friend’s troop of 13 girls. We waited in line for 20 or so minutes and finally were set to be the next group in the door. As we waited at the doorway to the work area a friendly docent let us see and stroke a young boa that was coiled around her arm. She confessed that she had never volunteered in the Reptile House before that day, and that she really didn’t much care for snakes.

We were at last led into the work area by a rather slight herpetologist, a pleasant young man who stood approximately 5’5”. The first thing that he explained was that the zoo used small, innocuous lizards for bug control in this area because the reptiles were too sensitive to chemicals to be exposed to pesticides. Indeed, we saw several small lizards about the room as we progressed. The young man walked us around the circular room, stopping to share tidbits about many of the inmates, and frequently holding up a specimen for the girls to see. (Did you know that the sex of turtles is determined by the temperature of the egg’s external environment at a crucial stage in its development, hence all hatchlings from any batch are of the same sex?)

As a Girl Scout Leader, it was always my habit to position myself as the last person in the group so that I could make sure that all were accounted for and watch for ...questionable behavior. On this occasion I was standing at the end of an arc with the front curving around the wall to my right. The zookeeper was holding up a snapping turtle (by one hind leg) for the girls to admire when something caught my eye.

To my left were two shelved carts spaced six inches apart. What caught my eye was a black forked tongue that was flicking from behind the left cart across and behind the right cart. Six inches. The small, innocuous lizards were no more than three inches long at best.

“Excuse me,” I said to the young man in my sugar coated Leader voice. “ Yes?” he looked at me. “I think that one of your lizards may be loose,” I said. After a few seconds of processing time, with the turtle dangling in mid-air, he verbally rolled his eyes at me, “Yes, Ma’am, as I explained, we let small lizards loose to eat the bugs.”

In a measured tone, ever mindful of the 18 girls and two Leaders who were now looking from one to the other of us, I said, “Yes, I was listening. This lizard is somewhat larger than those.” His eyes traveled around the room as he lowered the grateful turtle back into its tub at last. A case was open behind him, so I pointed to it and asked, “What lives in there?” Glancing over his shoulder he said, “ Oh, that’s the Monitor Lizards. But they’re too slow and lazy to get out, so we leave the door open for ventilation.

Now, this Leader grew up watching Wild Kingdom and National Geographic specials. As I looked at that long black tongue, I was doing some fast calculations in my head and decided that they might be wrong about those lizards. I next referenced the mental Poisonous Species file, and remembered that only the small but distinctive Gila Monster was venomous, but that any lizard bite had the potential for serious infection based on the bacteria commonly existing inside the mouth of said lizard.

“Girls, I want you all to stand back against the wall. Now, put your hand over your mouth like this,” I said as I cupped my hand and covered my mouth with it. “Good. Now keep your hand there until I tell you to move it.” Wide eyes looked back at me from each face, and I noted that my friends had done the same as the girls. As I was speaking, the large lizard decided it was time to move on, so I watched that six inch space as lizard hide kept on going and going and going. Since he measured more than six feet long, and was in no hurry, it seemed to take an awfully long time for the male monitor lizard to proceed around the circle. Just as the tail was passing my vantage point, the keeper slowly pulled the cart away from the wall. The lizard looked at the keeper. The keeper looked at the lizard. The girls and Leaders quietly screamed into their hands but stood their ground, too.

Then—off dashed the slow, lazy lizard. The keeper jumped for him, but only caught the tip of the tail, which slithered through his hands and was gone, leaving the poor man face down on the floor in front of us. He jumped up and raced after the lizard, and the chase was on. It quickly descended into a Bugs Bunny cartoon, because the two of them just kept racing around the central section of the room. The lizard may have thought that he was getting somewhere, but the man was merely getting frustrated. As they passed different tools, he kept grabbing things that he thought might help. The pillowcase over the head gambit was a complete washout because the lizard’s head was always gone before the pillowcase arrived. Same thing with the noose on a stick.

The last tool that the man grabbed was a large dip net, similar to the one my grandfather used to bring Muskies into the boat when I was a little girl. With a leap borne of frustration, embarrassment and fear for his job, the keeper managed to snag the dip net over the head of the monitor lizard. But the lizard wasn’t ready to roll over. No, the bad lizard dragged that poor man across the floor for a good ten feet before he shook the net off. But Mr. Monitor saw something that gave him a new purpose: the open door to freedom!

You may recall that the less-than-thrilled-to-be-there docent was standing in the doorway with a snake in her hands. This pleasant woman of about 50 years was standing with her feet spread quite far apart as she conversed with a family that was awaiting its turn for the tour. She must have looked like a goal post to that lizard, because he went directly between her legs as he raced into the hallway.

I would pay a great deal of money to see a video clip of the atrium as a six foot long black monitor lizard emerged from between the legs of that nice lady into a crowd of 50 or so people. I had never heard a man scream before that day and the sound of it was something I shall never forget. The girls and my fellow Leaders went from wide eyed and screaming into their own palms to howls of laughter as the herpetologist pursued the display into the hall.

Fortunately, the screams brought zookeepers running from every direction. The fast, ambitious lizard was apprehended and returned by three men to his pen (where his slow, lazy mate awaited). No one was bitten, we all had a memorable trip to the zoo, and the snake only had to spend a week in the hospital from the terrible squeeze the ex-docent gave it as the monitor lizard sprang forth from between her loins. And the mallard hen had corn to eat and a nice place to live in the bargain!

See you at the Zoo!

©2003, Renee Huddleston, all rights reserved

Page last updated: 05/11/2005