Dragon show

MOSES LAKE — It’s not every day a dragon visits the fair. 

“That’s exactly what they’re called, a black dragon,” said Don “the Reptile King” Riggs, Thursday. “One of only 250 in the world. We’re trying to increase those numbers; there were only four 11 years ago when we started working with them.” 

The dragon in question is a rare variety of Asian water monitor, and his name is Toothless, after a children’s book and subsequent movie titled “How to Train Your Dragon.” He was one of the animals that Reptile Isle, Riggs’ traveling show, brought to the Grant County Fair last week. 

Reptile Isle has been at the fair for the last three or four years, giving children a chance to meet not just Toothless, but also alligators, snakes and other creatures that might send them screaming for shelter if they saw them in the wild. 

“I've never met anybody who's been chased down the road by them, but everybody bases their opinion off what they get from movies and TV,” Riggs said. “So when given the opportunity to actually touch and interact with animals in a proper environment, they realize they're not trying to chase you down the street.” 

Riggs also has less-frightening reptiles like skinks, chameleons and tortoises both small and giant. He breeds and cares for more than 1,100 animals on 40 acres near Vancouver, he said. He has a special soft spot for Parson’s chameleons, a rare giant chameleon from Madagascar, but they don’t travel well, he said. 

“We can only transport so many of them to the shows,” he said. “We have duplicates and triplicates of a lot of the animals, because of how hard it is; we actually rotate them through the shows when we come out.” 

Usually, the animals are transported in a climate-controlled trailer, Riggs said, but because of the limitations of the Grant County Fairgrounds, for this trip he brought a U-Haul trailer. The temperature wasn’t a problem, he said, because they’re all cold-blooded. 

“They’re from warm areas,” he said. “They’re way better in the heat than we are, so they’re soaking it up. It’s the cooler temperatures you have to worry about.”  

Riggs held Toothless out on a leather-gloved hand for the children to see up close, and filled them in on a little about Toothless’ habits. He’s had Toothless all his life, so he’s not put off by the curious crowds. 

“Guys, that dragon tongue right there is one of the best sniffers in the animal kingdom,” Riggs told the audience. “They can actually smell their dinner up to five miles away. Now, my kids can smell McDonald's at least two or three miles away, but five miles away? That’s one of the best sniffers in the world.” 

Riggs’ mother was a marine biologist, he said, and his father was a professional musician, so the combination of critters and showmanship came naturally to him. He had originally gone to school to study physiology, but then met Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, in the early 1990s. After working four or five years with Irwin, who passed away in 2006, Riggs had found his calling. Reptile Isle’s breed-and-release programs include South American red-footed tortoises, which Riggs and his team reintroduce slowly into their native habitat. 

“If we can have a future zoologist in the crowd that decides that, because of this experience, they're actually going to help work with these animals in the future and help us conserve them, (or even) if we can stop one kid from throwing a rock or a stick at the next snake or lizard that they see, then I did my job,” Riggs said. “These animals are disappearing at such a terrific rate in both the countries that they come from and here that if we don't, especially with the younger generation, get people to fall in love with them, they're not going to be here anymore.”