Meet Mikey, the Iguana in a Witch Hat at the Pumpkin Show

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Pickaway County

The pumpkins are not the only things wearing orange at the Circleville Pumpkin Show this week.

Inside the Reptile Adventures exhibit, a spiny-tailed iguana named Mikey is spending the show laid out on a log in a tiny black and orange witch hat, like he owns the place. A bearded dragon is wearing a pumpkin hat. A blue-tongue skink has bunny ears. The animals do not seem to mind, and the kids cannot get enough of it.

Reptile Adventures is a traveling reptile show out of New Holland, right here in Pickaway County, run by husband and wife Paul and Joanna Hernandez. For $3 a person, with kids under 3 free, visitors can get close to sulcata tortoises, iguanas, a caiman, tegus, and pythons of several kinds. Most of the animals can be touched, and some can be held, with the crew right there to help.

Joanna was born and raised in Pickaway County and specialized in zoo keeping for years. Paul, who is not from Ohio originally, runs the show alongside her and also breeds and sells reptiles as Paul’s Cool Scales. Joanna says the whole thing started the way a lot of good ideas do, with one snake, and it just kept growing from there.

Every animal in the show has a name, and the crew is happy to introduce all of them. The caiman is Rex. The sulcata tortoise is Norman. The tegus are Theresa and Badger. The pythons include Daisy, Mario, and a pair of Burmese pythons named Balthazar and Solomon.

Mikey is the one in the hat, and dressing up is part of his job as an ambassador animal. The crew outfits the animals for the season and for school visits, on the simple thinking that a lizard in a hat is a lot less scary to a kid meeting one for the first time.

Head keeper Lacie, an Air Force veteran, handles much of the feeding and daily care. She says she was excited the day she joined the team and has not lost that feeling since. She likes working with all of the animals, even the tegus on the days they wake up with a bad attitude, and she counts herself grateful to have landed there. Her favorite is Topaz, a yellow albino iguana.

Cody, the operations manager and one of the show’s educators, started with Reptile Adventures as a volunteer in June and liked it so much he stayed on as an employee, helping with animal care and events. His favorite is Tulip, a carpet python.

Spend a few minutes talking reptiles with this crew and one name keeps coming up: Steve Irwin. His way of getting close, staying excited, and teaching the whole time is plainly the model around here, and it shows in how the team talks with kids.

When they are not at a fair, Reptile Adventures travels to schools, libraries, churches and birthday parties around Ohio, and the show can be booked for private events. Joanna says the library shows are a favorite, because nothing beats a kid’s face the first time they hold a snake.

The exhibit is open during the Pumpkin Show, which runs Wednesday through Saturday in downtown Circleville. Three dollars gets you in. The witch hat is free.

Reptile Adventures can be reached through reptile-adventures.com and on Instagram at @reptile.adventures.

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