I find it insane that someone would keep one of these guys, but then again, a lot of people keep hot snakes that could kill them in an instant.
Under laws in place today, Ron Huff would have needed an acre of land to legally keep the menagerie of exotic lizards found on and alongside his partially consumed body.
State officials said Thursday they believe Huff obtained his 1998 state permit to own and breed the Nile monitor lizards before the county’s exotic animal code took effect. That made it legal for him to keep the pets in his one-room studio apartment in Newark.
Current county law makes it illegal to keep any exotic animal on less than one acre in a residentially zoned area.
“It’s a situation which is mostly reactive. When someone brings it to our attention, we act on it,” New Castle County Land Use Department spokesman Vinnie Kowal said.
County police officers found seven of the monitor lizards in Huff’s apartment when they went to check on him Wednesday. Huff let the lizards - up to 6 feet long and weighing up to 25 pounds - roam free in the apartment.
Authorities have said they do not know how the 42-year-old lot attendant for a car dealership died. An autopsy is not finished, Department of Health and Social Services spokeswoman Allison Taylor Levine said. Finding a cause of death might take up to two weeks, she said.
Ronald Huff Sr. said he warned his son one of the lizards might hurt him someday. But his son doted on the pets and made sure he knew how to take care of them, he said.
“He loved all animals, not only lizards,” Huff said. " In the last three or four years he got started with a little one and bought another. I’d always call him and ask him how his family was."
Huff said his son was “an extremist in everything he did.” He was a bodybuilder and very health conscious, Huff said. “He wouldn’t even drink tap water.”
The state permit Huff obtained in 1998 did not limit the number of lizards he was allowed to have. In Delaware, it’s illegal to own exotic reptiles without being licensed.
The only licensing requirement was that the lizards not be a public nuisance or a menace, and that they receive the proper veterinary care, said state veterinarian H. Wesley Towers.
State officials received no complaints about Huff’s lizards, Towers said.
“Apparently, he took pretty good care of them,” he said.
Nile monitor lizards are indigenous to Africa, Australia and Malaysia. They feed on live prey, such as fish, snakes, birds, and can grow to 10 feet long.
Towers said no inspector went to Huff’s house when he applied for the permit to assure that reptiles would be kept in the proper environment.
“They either do that or accept pictures,” said Towers, adding that Huff supplied photographs.
But at the time he made application, Huff was living at his grandmother’s house in the 200 block of Madison Drive, a short distance away from the apartment complex on Thorn Lane.
Towne Court apartments manager Tanya Watts would not comment. Apartment rules allowed pets, but charged a $500 non-refundable pet fee.
The lizards are being kept at Delaware Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals shelter in Stanton until they can be placed with a zoo or in another educational situation.
“I’m going to keep them as long as I have to,” SPCA executive director John E. Caldwell said. “We’ll do the best to do the right thing, and if not, we’ll do what’s necessary.”
In Huff’s apartment, animal control officers also recovered a cat and a cooler full of 2-inch hissing Madagascar roaches used to feed the lizards.
Upstairs neighbor Jeff Windonger said he had thought about complaining to the apartment management about the roaches, but decided against it.
“I felt bad,” Windonger said. “He was a nice guy.”
Windonger said Wednesday night he found another of Huff’s cats outside and took it in.
The animal had a wound that was healing near its tail and pelvic area, Windonger said.
A co-worker said Huff told him that the lizards had attacked a cat. “He came to work with spatterings of blood on his pants two or three months ago, and said the lizards had bitten the cat,” said Mike Cassidy, used car manager at Martin Oldsmobile in Newark, where Huff worked.
What a small world this is. I work with Jeff Wildonger and he has told me this story many times. He said the lizzards basically ate the guy after he died. I would never keep something that had the potenial to eat me. LOL
