Enfield reptile center growing but struggling
Lack of group visits hurting facility that opened in fall 2020
Reptile expert Brian Kleinman has done educational outreach out of his East Granby home since 2003. In 2019, he began building Riverside Reptiles Education Center in Enfield. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, he was half-finished, but he soldiered on, opening in October 2020. Now, the center is open six days a week, but Kleinman is struggling like many entrepreneurs whose businesses depend on group visits.
“It’s tough with schools not doing field trips yet. That is something that gets museums through the slow seasons,” Kleinman said. “Many museums are hurting, and mine is no different. It was just bad timing, opening up during a pandemic.”
So Buddy the Fly River turtle, Skittles the panther chameleon, Eve the king cobra, reticulated pythons Kaa, Tarzan and Jane and their herpetological buddies sit in climatically appropriate enclosures, slithering along branches and flicking their tongues, waiting for more people to come to see them.
He has had some luck. “We have 600 members now, and we’ve had 16,000 people in a year. But our PRE-COVID estimate was 20 to 25,000, so we’re hoping to get the word out about us,” he said.
Kleinman, a former animal curator at The Children’s Museum in West Hartford, is a good steward of the 60-plus reptiles at the 13,000-square-foot center at 132 South Road. He collects animals on his own and is trusted by DEEP, Uconn and the Audubon Society to take in animals they can’t keep.
He gets animals that were seized because they’re not legal for domestic ownership. He is bequeathed animals in owners’ wills. One of his animals, a spiny lizard named Dolly, hitched a ride on a Fedex package from Texas. “Sometimes I get calls. People say, ‘I found this snake. Is it dangerous?”
He builds enclosures with backdrops of the countries the animals are from. Sometimes he teams up compatible animals, like Simon, the rhinoceros iguana, who lives peaceably with some large tortoises.
“You have to keep an eye on that. Animals might get along or we may have to move them,” he said. Kleinman keeps one tortoise away from the other tortoises. “He is younger, full of testosterone, always trying to mate or fight,” he said. “He’s not really a bully. He just does what tortoises do.”
He feeds them what they eat in
the wild, or other foods they are fond of. His prehensile-tailed skinks eat dandelion leaves and bananas. The king cobras’ favorite food is other snakes. When those aren’t available, they are fed shedded snakeskin stuffed with mice. His European legless lizard — which easily could be mistaken for a snake — eats calcium-encrusted cockroaches.
Kleinman has been in love with reptiles since childhood. “I am a native of Barkhamsted. The cool thing when I was young was to hang out in a mall, but the Simsbury mall was too far away, so I hung out in Tunxis State Forest,” he said. “Later
I worked at Roaring Brook as an educator and wildlife rehabilitator.”
He later got a degree in biology at Franklin Pierce University and began his animal-curating career.
His fondness for the creatures is obvious. He tells funny stories about them and imparts facts with a laugh and an eye toward entertainment. His three Gila monsters were used by Uconn researchers to study what the monsters’ tongue-flicking meant. After the study was over, the university’s Gila monster-ownership permits ran out, and the trio wound up in Kleinman’s care.
He loves his Gila monsters but laughs at their names. “You can tell they were named by college students.
They’re Lazy Boy, Mr. Mcnasty and Speck,” he said.
His Madagascar giant day geckos have a gross hobby — “Their favorite thing to do is to poop on the glass,” he said — and are among the most popular animals at the center. “Everybody loves geckos because of the Geico gecko, but that gecko blinks. Real geckos don’t blink,” he said.
His favorite animals are the venomous snakes. “They’re just a challenge to feed,” he said. Among these are his beautiful but deadly Western green mambas. “Drop for drop, they are the most venomous snakes in the world. And they’re very fast, the Ferraris of snakes,” he said. “People think snakes are not very smart, but mambas are
intelligent.”
Kleinman is on a mission to familiarize people with reptiles because of common misconceptions.
“Some people are scared of them, especially snakes,” Kleinman said. “My goal is to educate the public. These creepy creatures are an important part of our ecosystem. How can we respect and co-exist with them?”
Riverside Reptile Education Center is at 132 South Road in Enfield. It is open Tuesday to Sunday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on Monday for field trips only. Admission is $16, $14 for seniors, veterans and ages 3 to 11. Group rates available. riversidereptileeducationcenter.com.