Steven E. Ramsey believes lizards are some of the most fascinating animals on the face of the earth and he has dozens of them in his home to watch, study and play with.
Ramsey, 36, a letter carrier at the Sugarhouse Post Office for the past 10 years, became interested in reptiles when he was 7 years old living in a small rural area of central Alabama."I was playing on the bank of a stream near my home when a three-foot-long poisonous water moccasin struck my shoe, bit through the leather with his fangs and nearly punctured my toe.
"Lucky for me, his fangs just missed my skin or I would have been in big trouble. As it is, it just made me mad at snakes and I set about killing as many snakes as I could that summer."
Ramsey said he must have dispatched about 2,000 snakes, poisonous and non-poisonous, with sticks, metal poles and spiked instruments in the next few months. Then he killed an unusual snake that puzzled him so much he took it to a local natural history museum.
"The museum curator identified it as a hog nose or spread netter snake and he gave me a book about snakes and reptiles. I took it home and began reading it and studying the pictures and I stopped being angry at snakes and started getting interested in learning all about them."
Over the next few years, Ramsey said, he caught snakes and kept them in homemade cages and boxes and barrels around his home for a few weeks or a month and then let them go and got other snakes.
"I kept them as pets and fed them mice and lizards and insects. I caught turtles, too, and frogs and salamanders and lizards and kept them as pets."
Ramsey moved to Utah with his family when he was about 16 and graduated from East High School. He kept up his interest in reptiles and gradually moved his focus from snakes to turtles to lizards.
"Lizards are a lot more interesting than snakes because they move around a lot more, eat more often and have a more varied diet than snakes. It is a challenge to raise them in captivity and breed them and raise their young,"
He has learned how to doctor his lizards with home remedies and medicines, learned what kind of lighting is best for his pets, what temperatures are most conducive to their health and what diets are best.
Over the past few years he has had thousands of lizards, but has sold some of his menagerie to pay for family medical bills and now has about 12 species of lizards - about 70 of them - in his heated attached garage.
His oldest pet is an Australian blue tongued skink, a variety of lizard, that a friend gave him eight years ago. He figures the lizard is 15 years old. He has seven Australian blue tongue lizards and considers them his prize pets. Two of the biggest measure two feet from nose to tail.
Among the lizards he found in Utah's deserts and brought home to raise and breed are desert spinys, des-ert collards and fence lizards. He has purchased other lizards from pet stores or from other lizard fanciers throughout the United States.
"They come by Express Mail, which is the fastest and cheapest method of delivery."
A few years ago, he said, he was spending $100 a month or more to feed his pets, which numbered more than 300, but only spends about $30 a month now to buy crickets, giant mealy worms, baby rats and mice, canned dog food and vegetables.
Ramsey said his goal is to someday build a reptile zoo where visitors can come and enjoy looking at his pets.
The reptile expert often visits local schools, Scout groups and clubs and has had many people visit his wiggling menagerie.
"Reptiles are great pets and a swell hobby. I've been at it nearly 30 years and I never tire of watching my pets and playing with them."