Trying to Turn 'Eww' Into 'Ahh'

[faze]

Date: Sep 10, 2004 - 03:52 PM
Annandale Woman Aims To Educate About Reptiles

By Margaret Roth
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, September 9, 2004; Page VA03

You can ask Caroline Seitz why her Nile monitor has a four-inch-long forked tongue. What makes her albino Burmese python so pale. Or how old her big African spurred tortoise will live to be. Just don't ask her what kind of snake lived in the Garden of Eden.

For that is where pleasure meets business for Seitz, founder and owner of Reptiles Alive! -- and business must come first. Smiling and enthusiastic, Seitz and her staff of three relish the challenge of showing kids and adults in their many area presentations that snakes don't bite unless threatened, that iguanas are fascinating but not much fun and that turtles are more fragile than they look. The finer points of public relations -- fielding questions involving evolution, the animals' need to mate and the like -- are more an acquired skill.

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