A Lizard Runs Through It

Dave DiNaso doesn't mind being called “The Reptile Guy.” It sounds awesome, he says, and besides, anyone who performs hundreds of reptile shows every year probably deserves the moniker. But it just doesn't define him. If reptiles are his living, animals are his life.

Take his pet raccoon Rascal for instance. Back in 1997, already four years into his reptile shows, DiNaso was driving home one day when he saw a dead raccoon on the side of the road and three raccoon babies hanging around their dead mother. DiNaso got out of his truck, scooped up the babies, and took them back to his house. He cleaned them off, fed and nursed them for a couple of months, and then released them into the wild.

However, the next day, one of the raccoons returned to DiNaso's house. Later that day, DiNaso took the raccoon back to the woods and released her again. The next day, when the raccoon returned to DiNaso's backyard again, he kept her. Fourteen years later, the playful Rascal the raccoon is a fixture in DiNaso's family.

And fourteen years later, Downers Grove resident DiNaso is still “The Reptile Guy,” performing under the banner “Dave DiNaso's Traveling World of Reptiles,” which travels around Illinois and northwest Indiana each year performing more shows than there are days. When DiNaso started his shows in 1993, he did 41 of them that first year. Two years later, he was up to 350 and the hobby became a living.

DiNaso and his two employees—Chris Boerema and Jim Galeno—have performed roughly 10,000 of the shows over the past eighteen years at every venue from libraries to schools to birthday parties and private events. Of those 10,000 shows, DiNaso estimates he's performed 7,000 of them. Boerema joined the company six years ago, Galeno three.

The work doesn't stop at performing the 75 minute long shows, either. The Traveling World of Reptiles is a huge undertaking. At their New Lenox facility DiNaso houses upwards of 100 animals, complete with enclosures that mimic each animal's natural habitat. In addition, there are temporary enclosures that all three men have built in their own homes for times when they can't get back to the main facility. Each year DiNaso and his crew spend roughly $20,000 on electricity, insurance, heat, food and re-building enclosures—as animals grow, their needs change—just to keep the business running. DiNaso also handles all of the scheduling and planning, which is a lot of organization for the company considering they're scheduled to perform over 800 shows this year alone.

The shows mix humor with education, but the real learning occurs watching DiNaso care for and talk about the animals he interacts with. He's self-trained, but you wouldn't know. He's equally adept at rehabilitating a rescue or handling a venomous snake.

“Everything I've learned with venomous [animals] I've learned completely on my own and in the wild,” DiNaso said. “I've read a lot of books but there's no class called 'How to Pick Up a Rattlesnake 101.'”

DiNaso said in learning to work with venomous he took his lumps with the non-lethal variety.

“If I get bit, I get bit, so what? I'm not going to die. Eventually you get so good it's rare that you ever miss.”

DiNaso is entirely self-trained, and came to working with reptiles after toiling in various jobs he didn't care about after graduating from college with a communications degree. He wanted to work with animals, and nothing else was ever going to satisfy him, he said. Naturally curious, DiNaso reads most any book he can get his hands and frequently takes trips—sometimes alone, sometimes with his family or employees—to rainforests and other exotic locations throughout the world to study and interact with animals in their natural habitats.

Currently, DiNaso is rehabilitating an Emerald Tree Boa Constrictor he's had for four months that refuses to eat on its own. The snake came to DiNaso after someone who owned it as a pet took it to a pet store unsure of why it wasn't eating. The snake was malnourished and close to death when DiNaso stepped in to help, as he often does when a variety of area organizations and agencies have an animal they need his help with or expertise on.

“One of the most difficult things I have to do with rescues, if they're emaciated or sick, is force-feed them, which means I have to pick up a dangerous thing and I have to shove something down its throat,” DiNaso said. 

The very expensive boa, DiNaso said, is high-maintenance animal that stresses out easily in captivity. The snake was probably caught in the wild and wasn't raised in an environment that mimics its own.

“He will adapt if you know how to take care of them, and a lot of people don't,” DiNaso said. “They don't know how to heat him right, give him the right humidity, and eventually he'll just wilt away.”

The snake, while still not eating on its own, looks healthier than when DiNaso first got him, he said. And if all goes well, DiNaso hopes to add him to his shows. He's worked with them before, though he doesn't trust them enough to allow children at his shows to touch them.

For now, though, DiNaso has to force-feed him, which involves cramming dead mice—carefully—down the snake's throat with the inside of a ballpoint pen. Getting the mice past the snake's mouth isn't good enough, as the snake will regurgitate the meal if left to its own devices, so DiNaso must also massage the mice past the snake's throat and all the way down to its stomach. It's not easy and takes a delicate touch.

“This has some of the longest teeth of any non-venomous snake,” DiNaso said. “And although it's not going to kill you, it's no fun when a hundred needles are going into your skin.”

DiNaso is still fairly young in his early 40's but after nearly two decades of performing the shows, it's apparent DiNaso is thinking more and more about the future. He's entertained pitches from investors about creating a stationary world of reptiles show, but DiNaso doesn't like the risk involved, despite how much he'd like to do it.

“I'd love to...but I don't want to take that chance,” he said. “Rent and insurance would be ridiculous, and if I couldn't draw 500 people a week it would close down and I'd be out of business.” 

Instead, he sees himself cutting back on the amount of shows he personally does, shifting some of the responsibilities and workload over to his employees.

“I have a family now and I've been doing this for 18 years,” DiNaso said. “I still do about a third of the shows but I'm kinda handing the reigns over to Jim [Galeno] and Chris [Boerema].” 

It's a decision that's perfectly fine for Galeno, who came to working with DiNaso after working at the Stingray Bay exhibit at the Brookfield Zoo. Galeno hopes to keep doing the shows “forever, because it's awesome.” Boerema, for his part, recently took a leave of absence from the company for eight months to backpack through South America, but is expected to return in April.

Of course, even if DiNaso does hand the reigns over, there's a good chance those reigns will eventually go to his kid.

“There's no doubt in my mind that eventually it will Danny Dinaso's traveling world of reptiles,” he said. “He's just into it that much. He loves animals.”