PHOENIX -- The largest exotic animal rescue effort in U.S. history has brought 500 reptiles and eight-legged creatures to the Valley, the
Phoenix Herpetological Society said.
Society members arrived in Phoenix Friday night after making a 2,200 mile roundtrip to Dallas to transport the abused animals to a facility in the Valley. The haul included dozens of pythons, king snakes, spiders and lizards.
"These guys are in really poor shape," said PHS Director Russ Johnson. "These are little savannah monitors and they're very, very skinny."
Johnson said the animals are a fraction of the almost 27,000 pets seized from U.S. Global Exotics, a pet wholesaler accused of denying their animals food and water and confining them in cramped cages.
Authorities raided the company's warehouse on Tuesday and discovered the dead, starving and neglected creatures, some of them attacking each other, in thousands of cages.
"It was the most blatant case of animal cruelty I've ever seen," Johnson said.
PHS is one of dozens of rescue groups now caring for the animals. Once they can be checked out by a veterinarian and deemed healthy, they will be available for adoption.
"These are non-lethal animals and many will be qualified to be pets for kids," Johnson said.
One cage has a pile of 50 Chinese water dragons.
"We got a bunch of animals in here with pieces of tail knocked off," Johnson said.
There are also more snakes than you can count.
"We got king snakes, milk snakes, all are benign little animals," Johnson said.
A few large arachnids round out the menagerie. One tarantula is labeled aggressive. There are a dozen
kinkajous, relatives of the racoon from South America.
"It took 3½ hours just to box up everything and put it on the trailer," Johnson said.
Some medical supplies are being donated by a local pharmacy.
On Saturday, dozens of volunteers will triage all of the animals. A veterinarian will individually check out each one, looking for parasites. They will then begin feeding all of them and the ones that bounce back the quickest will be the first available for adoption.
No criminal charges have been filed against Arlington, Texas,-based U.S. Global Exotics, which acquired the creatures from around the world.
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