If I haven’t mentioned it before, I love day trips. I like being able to get up at my usual indolent hour, enjoy an unhurried breakfast, and then head somewhere, agenda in hand, with enough time to feel as though I’ve had “an experience” — and still get home in enough time for dinner. Or better yet, grab a meal at an eatery we’ve cased on the internet — preferably locally owned and ethnic. We’re weird like that.

Fifty minutes from Mount Vernon there’s a place in Monroe, Washington where even in the dead of winter you’ll feel as though it’s a May evening on the bayou. That place is The Reptile Zoo. If the name conjures up images of sketchy carnival sideshow attractions, prepare yourself for a very pleasant surprise. As quality nature displays go, The Reptile Zoo is the real deal. It’s entertainment with a big dollop of education. It’s also a great family outing. Seriously, parents, what kid isn’t going to thrill to the sight of an albino alligator or a two-headed turtle? At nearly 70 years young, I still get goosebumps.

The story of The Reptile Zoo’s origins are an affirmation that the best guarantee that you’ll love what you do is to do what you love. And when you’re talking about people who do what they love, you’re talking about Scott Petersen — aka, the Reptile Man).

Maybe you knew a kid like Scott Petersen in grade school. The kid (boy or girl) who was really into snakes, lizards, and amphibious animals of all sorts. It was highly likely that this was a kid could reel off innumerable facts about poisonous snakes from all over the world, and whose prize possession was a pet iguana. His/her bedroom always smelled a bit funky and was 10 degrees warmer than the rest of the house in order to accommodate his/her cold-blooded pets.

If you did know such a kid, it is also pretty likely that she/he moved on to other obsessions in life. Or maybe, like Scott Petersen, their love of reptiles led them to become high school biology teachers. In Scott’s case, however, his zeal to “help others appreciate more fully the beauties and mysteries the natural world has to offer” compelled him to seek a wider audience than a classroom full of eager young minds.

Within a few years of teaching, Scott decided to start a business giving reptile presentations at a variety of venues. In more than 20 years traveling throughout Washington, Scott has shared his passion for reptiles in more than 800 such presentations (Scott uses the term “performances”) for schools, festivals, corporate parties and other events. And thanks to appearances on Scott Disney’s Bill Nye The Science Guy and PBS’s Biz Kids, Scott’s mission has extended well beyond the Evergreen State.

I first became aware of Scott several years ago at an event in Burlington, on the amphitheater behind the Chamber of Commerce. It may have been during Berry Dairy Days, but I recall that the weather was fine and there were scores of kids who “oohed and aahed” over the animals on display. But even more than the benefits of seeing and touching creatures they may only have encountered in books or on screens, the audience (young and old) learned a lot about them and their place in the circle of life. That was when making a trip to Monroe went on my bucket list, to be crossed off when the grandkids got a old enough to sit in the car for an hour without asking if we were there yet.

Taking an eight year old and a six year old to The Reptile Zoo was a highly enjoyable experience. The grandsons looked at everything — which included such exotics as the albino alligator, the two-headed turtle (for real), an alligator roughly the size of a VW bus, and a spine tingling variety of the world’s most poisonous snakes, nearly every one of which is a slithering advertisement for not vacationing in Australia or Africa. This would be a good time to mention that The Reptile Zoo’s collection of lethal reptiles has been surgically devenomized — which, when you’re dealing with snakes that can kill you quickly and in a variety of unpleasant ways, is very reassuring.

The grandsons asked a lot of questions, which we were generally able to answer based on the exhibit signage, picked out some reptilian souvenirs from the gift shop, and came away from their visit with a more profound appreciation of the beauty and diversity of the natural world — just as Scott Petersen intended when he decided to chuck his day gig as a science teacher for a unique entrepreneurial endeavor that still allowed him to be a science teacher, but with a much larger classroom.

A word about The Reptile Zoo for those of you who, understandably, have mixed emotions about keeping animals in manmade environments. The first thing I would note is that the exhibits are really well designed and scrupulously clean — just as you would expect from a man who has dedicated his career to wildlife (no “funky odors like your classmate with the reptile collection’s bedroom”). As you would therefore expect, the animals look amazingly healthy.

The second thing I would point out is that many of the more than 100 animals exhibited are “rescues” — taken off the hands of folks who may have acquired them with good intentions but ultimately lacked the resources or long-term interest to properly care for them. With Scott and The Reptile Zoo they have what animal adoption agencies are fond of calling “a forever home.”

Scott Petersen’s legacy continues with his children, as will his traveling presentations in a post-pandemic world. According to The Reptile Zoo’s website, the next generation of Petersens will “help in realizing his dream of becoming a force for good in promoting conservation and sustainability.” On the day we took the grandsons to The Reptile Farm, Scott’s son Isaac was head zookeeper. When I asked him about how the zoo had coped during the pandemic, he told me that it had been a challenge, but they were making it, and were thankful to be once again open to the public, albeit with some health restrictions aimed at protecting their visitors as well as their animals.

For those of you who are contemplating a visit to The Reptile Farm, check out the feeding times and other scheduled hands-on opportunities (you can pet the tortoises on a daily basis). Kids love that sort of thing. And if they need to run off a little energy before or after their visit, consider taking them to nearby Rainier City Park.

See you later, alligator!