NORFOLK, Va. — "How are we doing today? We’re going to take a stroll through here and introduce Butters. She’s a 12-foot-long Burmese python."
We had a little show-and-tell in the News 3 newsroom with Lizard Land owner Paul Didario and his slithery sidekicks.
"You mainly display her when she’s not hungry, right? She only likes one particular food — rabbits," Kurt Williams asked.
"I'm just going to plop her in your lap. Oh, it's not that bad. She's only 80 pounds."
Claire, our producer, warmed up to Butters.
However, uur assistant news director, Nicole, was not having it.
Our tour took us to the set to see if we could interest anchor Jessica Larche in some lizard love.
"Oh no! This is Barry the tegu. Are you holding him? I got him. Oh my God — no! Oh no, he's on the floor."
This little Godzilla almost made his debut on live television.
"Where is he? He's like a lizard dog."
"A lizard dog?"
"Should I put him up here?"
"Absolutely not!"
Not everyone likes to cozy up to these cold-blooded critters, but Didario assures us none of these animals is venomous.
"I do birthday parties, school programs. We do a lot of summer reading programs with the library," Didario said.
He recently expanded Lizard Land to 2,000 square feet to accommodate supersized snakes like Butters. If you visit the living museum in Currituck County, you can see nearly 200 snakes, lizards, amphibians and arachnids, most of them rescued or surrendered.
As I found out, Pickle the anaconda isn't so scary after all. Pickle and her friends are "Positively Hampton Roads."
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