From my 24 day/81 zoo road trip of 2015: Northwest Arkansas Reptile Museum: Northwest Arkansas Reptile Museum is a non-AZA accredited zoo located in Springdale, Arkansas, and it recently moved from its previous location in nearby Fayetteville, Arkansas. This place is a tiny room with only about 30 specimens and I was amazed at how small and cluttered it was. I walked in to the Rolling Stones blasting on a CD player and the owner is a total eccentric. I made his day by showing up and discussing zoos with him and what could have been a 10 minute visit turned into half an hour as I didn’t have the heart to leave early. The owner is probably in his late 50’s and he talked nonstop as when he heard that I had seen 300+ zoos he must have felt like he had just met a kindred spirit. For almost 20 years he was in Fayetteville, Arkansas, but moved to a nearby town because “I hated the damn cops over there”. Hahaha. The guy has religious magazines strewn about on a couple of tables, a door covering the American Alligator pool (yes, an actual door!) and some big buckets with turtles all over. The whole ramshackle place is a disgrace but the guy is unique. He has a 5-foot gator in a 6-foot round tub but he was heading out to an Alligator Park to “trade the big bastard for a 15-incher”. I prepared to leave and he kept saying “don’t go yet” and he pulled out all the stops to keep me there for half an hour. First of all he plunged his hands into a large round stainless steel tank and emerged with a 25-pound Alligator Snapping Turtle; then he tossed a live white mouse into the American Alligator exhibit and the rodent lasted about a second; lastly, the owner took a baby mouse (still pink and with its eyes closed) and tossed it in the Red-Bellied Piranha tank. That was an interesting moment, but overall the place is a shambles and the owner is odd to say the least. He just got married last year but for the entire 20 years he owned his previous reptile zoo he said that he slept either in his van or on the floor in the back of the store. Now that he is married he said “it is great to finally have a bed”. Hilarious!
Is this a stand alone building or just a room in someone's house? And he seems to be quite a character indeed.
It is not set inside a house as the small Reptile Zoo has stores on either side of it in a tiny "strip mall". I already uploaded a photo of the exterior.
