A home where the reptiles roam

Walter, a 46-year-old rhinoceros iguana, shows off his skateboard moves at his home in Tucson, Ariz. Photo: ©2012 JOHN BINNS.

Daily baths, natural stone floors, misting nozzles, heat lamps, a cool pool, fresh greens. No, this isn't a luxury resort spa -- it’s the life of a kept reptile.

What leads some homeowners to cater to these toothy, scaly, often-maligned beasts in this way? Call it cold-blooded love, maybe. It all comes through in the clear, simple excitement in their voices and in their pet reptiles' sometimes extravagant, customized living quarters.

Herpers, as those people impassioned by reptiles and amphibians are known, are a different breed, and outfitting homes as oases for exotic animal life is no simple task.

Keeping reptiles in a residential setting requires more than devotion, to be sure -- it's a science of controlled humidity and finely-tuned temperature gradients, and specialized food, vitamins and supplements. It ain’t easy.

According to the American Pet Products Association, 4.6 million U.S. households have made the effort to take care of 13 million pet reptiles as of 2011.

Making iguanas at home

Last summer, at his family's new home in Tucson, Ariz., retired Silicon Valley electronics engineer John Binns, now founder and CEO of the International Reptile Conservation Foundation (IRCF), designed and built a 270 square-foot vivarium attached to his house to accommodate his five huge rock iguanas, a large iguana species native to the West Indies, and six green iguanas.

"If you haven't seen them before," said Binns, "they're just like dinosaurs."

Chuckwallas. Photo: ©2012 JOHN BINNS.

The vivarium includes six indoor and five indoor/outdoor cages, an antique cast-iron claw-foot tub, skylights, and intricate temperature regulation controls to hold his iguanas. He baths them daily.

Indoor enclosures in Tucson, Ariz. Photo: ©2012 JOHN BINNS.

Small "doggy" doors allow the rock iguanas, which are kept in the bottom row of the stacked 2-by-2-by-4-foot cages indoors, to sun outside in a modified dog kennel built of heavy-gauge wire mesh. Sometimes, they get the run of the house and sun by Binns' backyard pool.

Izzy, a Cuban rock iguana, peers out of a doggy door. Photo: ©2012 JOHN BINNS.

A green iguana basks in the sun at poolside. Photo: ©2012 JOHN BINNS.

It's not easy keeping large iguanas. Rock iguanas can grow to be 20 pounds or more and can live up to 60 years. After a successful career in Silicon Valley, Binns's conservation work with IRCF and owning iguanas "allow me to put something back into the earth," he said.

Actually, the cost of keeping the iguanas was what prompted the move from a five-bedroom, large-lot, upscale home near San Jose, Calif., where he and his wife Sandy had been living. The utility bills were too high, he said.

A green iguana perches on a branch in this photo of its former home in San Jose, Calif. Photo: ©2012 JOHN BINNS.

An iguana rests on a rock in this photo of its former home in San Jose, Calif. Photo: ©2012 JOHN BINNS.

Since reptiles are ectotherms -- they're dependent on their environment to regulate their internal temperature -- Binns said he was spending about $1,300 to $1,500 a month in electricity bills to power heat lamps to warm the reptiles in that Pacific Ocean-cooled locale.

In Tucson, the undiminished burning desert sun does a lot of the heating work -- his electricity bill, he said, has plummeted to about $300.

Outdoor enclosures in Tucson, Ariz. Photo: ©2012 JOHN BINNS.

Still, the iguanas might have had it better, digs-wise, in San Jose. By Binns's account they lived like kings. Binns had converted a bathhouse into a freestanding vivarium and built another companion vivarium nearby from the ground up.

The stucco, copper-roofed buildings were each about 330 square feet and had stylish round windows, internal shutters and tile floors.

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