Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Within Range coaching podcast.
I'm Ranger, a certified holistic success coach.
And in this podcast, I break down the journey entrepreneurs face
as they start their organizations,
overcome roadblocks in their way,
and create an impact that lasts.
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I know you're just as eager to get started as I am,
so let's jump right in.
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everybody.
And welcome to the Within Range coaching podcast.
Today, we're talking to Victoria Storm
from the House of Voodoo Reptile Sanctuary in Payson, Arizona.
Victoria is one of my hosts during my walk across America
where I got to check out their rescue,
see the amazing animals that they have,
everything from the typical ball pythons to bearded dragons,
all the way up to small crocodilians and rattlesnakes.
They have a really unique system going on there,
really unique setup,
some educational facilities in the Payson area,
and they were recently awarded a $5,000 Moonshot grant
from a local organization in Arizona.
So they got some really great things going on.
They're not just sitting there talking about it,
they're out there making it happen.
So without further ado,
here is our discussion with Victoria Storm
of the House of Voodoo Reptile Sanctuary.
I'm doing good.
It's been a crazy day already, but doing good.
I bet.
Well, I'm sure we'll kind of get into it
in just a second, but I know that you're a vet tech.
Yes.
So you do a lot of animal things in your life,
but could you just kind of give us a quick,
when I say a lot of animal things,
what exactly that means?
Yeah, so I work at
Maine Animal Hospital Veterinary Clinic
here in Payson, Arizona,
but I also am the director
at the House of Voodoo Reptile Sanctuary.
501C Nonprofit Reptile Rescue and Sanctuary
housing a little bit over a hundred different animals
at our facility.
Yeah, and everybody knows already, I guess,
but this is part of my Walk Across America series
and I did actually get to stay with you guys
and the Reptile Sanctuary over when I was passing through Payson.
And I thought it's always so interesting
seeing how other rescues are run
and seeing the different, I guess, focuses
on what you guys are comfortable with
because when I ran the Northern California Herp Society,
we wanted nothing to do with hots, like venomous species.
We didn't want any rattlesnakes,
we didn't want anything crazy, no crocodilians,
but you guys have just that.
So when it comes to the animals that you guys have,
like what is your mission with what you do?
Because I know you said that adoption isn't
up to NCHS when I was there.
So if you can just talk a little bit about that.
Yeah, of course.
So when I came up with and started
the House of Udu Reptile Sanctuary,
it's mostly about finding, taking care of animals
and rehabilitating them and educating about them
so that way we have less of these particular species
being surrendered to facilities
because with any type of, I should say hobby
industry business, reptiles are very dominant
and overpopulated and people are buying them
bearded dragons for $39.99 when they're this little
and have no idea how to take care of them or what to do.
And so then they get surrendered to facilities
and not even a lot of them facilities,
a lot of times they get surrendered to small rescues
and sometimes the rescues get overwhelmed as well.
And I feel like through education and conservation
we can really teach our society
how to properly care for these animals
so that way we have less in the rescue industry.
And the same with the furry rescues,
the humane societies and stuff,
they're promoting spay and neuter
so that way there's the puppies out there
being surrendered.
It's kind of the same concept except we're not really
trying to get you to spay and neuter your ball python.
We're just trying to get you to understand
that you're not really a vegan.
And so yeah, adoption is not our main focus.
Mostly it's education, conservation, and rehabilitation.
Yeah, and when it comes to that,
because I had an episode a few months back
with Floyd Felines, they're a cat-specific rescue
out of Georgia and that was their big thing
was spay and neuter, spay and neuter, spay and neuter,
which is like you were saying,
and they're very out there doing their thing.
But when it comes to reptiles and amphibians
and even invertebrates like spiders, scorpions,
a lot of times people, it sounds like what you're saying
is people just don't know how to take care of them
or they really don't know what they're getting themselves into.
I feel like they don't really know
what they're getting themselves into
and there's some really great pet stores out there,
genre-specific pet stores for reptiles and exotics
that they do give you the whole nine yards.
You can, but still at the same point in time,
those reptile stores are out to make money
and they're not necessarily concerned about the long-term
for the reptile that they're selling.
So basically you have, say, Petco or PetSmart,
even though PetSmart is one of our amazing donors
and they do a lot of great work,
still a lot of their employees don't 100% know
how to take care of a bear dragon in detail.
They're selling these bear dragons for $39.99.
People are like, yeah, I got 40 bucks, I can buy that
and I'm gonna go put them in a shoe box
for the next few years because then they realize,
oh, tanks are $300, lights are $60.
Buying a setup for lights is a little bit more
than that bedding, substrate, food, daily food,
daily food, pyramids, vegetables, calcium powder,
UVB-specific mercury vapor bulbs, heating pads,
whatever, it goes well beyond
than just buying that $40 bearded dragon.
It can go into the $500, $600 range
to start a new bearded dragon habitat
if you don't already have the stuff.
You can probably drop it to the $300 range
if you're buying used equipment here and there
where you can find them.
But again, that mindset that people have
when buying these reptiles at pet stores is,
oh, $50, I can buy that.
And then they don't think about the long-term in it all.
They feel like if I can educate people,
hey, it's cool, it's perfectly okay for you
to go out and buy from these stores and these animals
so long as you understand what it takes
to actually take care of this animal.
So many times do all, actually all of our bearded dragons
at our facility have some sort of health issue
or another, metabolic bone disease,
neurological disorders, liver, kidney failures.
So much, they come to us in these dire medical conditions
and they don't have proper knowledge
of how to care for the animals.
Yeah, and I always would joke around with people that,
because lizards, they can be very cheap.
You can find them on Craigslist,
like you're saying, you know, $39.99.
But people will be giving these guys away on Facebook,
Craigslist, on all these different things.
And I got my bearded dragon from a friend
who had gotten hers in like a two-for-one deal.
I don't know what kind of pet store sells beardies
but she got them home, realized they're not supposed
to do that and then said,
Hey, Ranger, do you want this free lizard?
I was like, of course I want a free lizard.
I'm losing money by not taking it.
And then you get it and it's like,
okay, now you need the tank.
Like you were saying, now it's another 600, 700 bucks
just for the startup equipment.
So people just really don't know
what they're getting themselves into with it.
Nope, and it's the same with all pythons.
I'm not a big owner.
I will always tell people I start out with a bald python
because they're not as high maintenance as bearded dragons.
Like I can't tell you how many times I've heard
and I've talked to people,
other people in the reptile community that said,
Oh yeah, no, beard dragons are great starters.
I'm like beard dragons are so difficult
for someone that's just starting out.
Not necessarily that people can't do it
but there's so much entailed to taking care of them
and yeah, you've got to make sure
you have still the proper lights,
the proper substrate, the proper space
and feeding them once a week.
And then some people have a hard time feeding.
People are more inclined to feed the bearded dragon
thinking it's easier to feed the bearded dragon
than the snake
because they don't want to feed the dead mouse.
But in reality, you only have to feed that snake once a week,
maybe once every two weeks
and make sure that they're humidity
and they have water and the temperature.
And I feel like a bald python is a lot easier
than any type of lizard or any type of animal,
even cortices.
Bald pythons are so low maintenance and so hardy
that I feel like if you're just starting out
and you're just learning a bald python
it's the perfect one to start with.
Yeah, bald pythons, leopard geckos, bearded dragon,
like they're all kind of toted as like the big three
from what I've seen.
And over time being in the rescue industry,
like I don't know bearded dragons,
they were usually okay.
You know, like no big, no long-term issues,
even if they weren't eating for a while,
they weren't being cared for properly.
But the bearded dragons, like you were saying,
they'd come in, their backs,
like their backbone looks like an ass,
like a zigzag,
like you were saying, metabolic bone disease,
all these crazy things.
And I don't know, I always touted bearded dragons
as the best beginner one
because they're so handleable.
And then seeing how people kind of screw up
it was like, wait a second,
I feel like this isn't quite
what we should be touting almost.
And the same with leopard geckos too.
Up until recently leopard geckos and bearded dragons
were our most surrendered animal at the sanctuary.
Now we have like so many bald pythons,
it's not even funny.
But we've had a lot of thick leopard geckos come in
and the hard thing is, is once leopard geckos
get to a certain point,
they're not saveable, unfortunately.
It takes lots and lots of medical care to save them
and I'll be 100% honest on here,
we have gotten some really, really thick leopard geckos
and we just were not able to save them.
No matter if I was syringe feeding them,
syringe giving them water,
giving them medications,
we were just not able to save them.
We do have our success stories,
we do have some that were rescued from a pet store
that were skin and bones when we got them
and now they're beautiful big fluffy tails
and are all happy and looking good.
But leopard geckos and bearded dragons
and stuff are actually our very top,
those are the top three,
those are the top three in the industry trade
or we can even go bigger though,
big one in the industry trade
is retics and Burmese pythons
and people not really realizing
how big these guys get and saying that thing,
oh yeah, that'd be really cool to have one of those
and then when they get 17 feet,
they're like, I don't know what to do with it.
Same with cicadas and used to be,
you could buy a cicada from a guy
underneath a tent on the side of the road for $29.
That's actually a funny story,
my husband did that,
oh gosh, 30 some odd years ago when he was a kid,
he went and bought his mom a little baby cicada
from a dude on the side of the road
and then his mom still has it,
the cicada is huge,
it takes four guys to move them.
So that's a really good success story for a tortoise
and I think that's a 10%
Hey everyone, just a quick message.
Yeah, and kind of moving into,
because what you kind of told me,
I think right before we hopped on
is that you guys just got a huge influx of ball pythons
and when I worked with NCHS,
we would get those every once in a while,
hoarding situations, failed rescues,
animal abuse, breeders,
or yeah, so like what is it typically,
when you get in animals,
what are typically the reasons
for the animals we've been getting
is either we just can't take care of them anymore,
we don't have the time,
we don't have the space,
or they're very, very ill.
So it's usually a very right even down the middle,
it's either they're very sick,
I don't know what to do for him anymore,
I can't help them,
or I don't have the time,
he's getting too big,
I just can't take care of him anymore.
And so like we're right even,
I'm not here to judge anybody,
like you do what you can,
and you get what you got,
and I'm here to just help your animal,
but it can be frustrating sometimes
because there's some that I've had to put down
and I sat there and said,
I just don't know why he didn't reach out
to somebody sooner.
We had a bearded dragon that we got in
that lived in a shoe box,
quite literally a shoe box for two years.
A very good kind-hearted woman took him
from the previous owner,
it was I guess a friend or friend's brother
and we had him for about three or four months
till she decided,
this is too much for me,
I can't do this,
and then decided to contact us.
And at that point,
we had him for all of a month
when we decided,
hey, his quality of life is absolutely horrible,
it really is time,
and we had to humanely euthanize him.
And the sad part is that sometimes people
are embarrassed to have to surrender their animals,
and I would like people to just know
that it's a really bad feeling
to have to get rid of something that you really do love,
but for the best quality of life for the animal,
find somebody that can help you with them
if medical bills,
if it's too expensive,
reptiles have a really high medical bill
when you have to take them,
if and when you can find a vet that can take them.
Yeah, that's something that I realized
was kind of an issue because, I mean,
the NCHS is based out of Sacramento
and there's a bunch of veterinarians out there,
so residents,
you can identify the medical bill
or any physical bill affected danced
vet and she had to pay an exotic fee.
or Mazod точya develops
Yep.
So it's like anything that's not a cat or dog is going to have all these extra
it's probably more than 80% of Madison's
or no, it's Benan patched,
but not in any way,
things stacked on top of each other.
Yeah.
So I have a $400 photo of my bearded dragon and X-ray and I'm like, what am I
and so it's sort of like
supposed to do with this?
Yeah, I know.
I get it.
We're the only clinic here in Pates and my clinic that I work at, the only
clinic here in Pates that sees exotic animals outside of being like farm
animals, we have our farm vet, but like for guinea pigs, rabbit,
nakes, lizards, certain types of birds.
We're the only clinic here in Pates and that sees those exotic animals.
And you know, yeah, our, our initial exam fee is a little bit higher than,
it's just a little bit higher than the normal exam fee for a cat or a dog.
Um, and that's just because it takes a different kind of medicine to treat and
takes longer too, whereas a doctor can go into a room with a cat or dog and
typically be out in 20 or 30 minutes with a reptile.
She has to do a whole different types of things for exams.
And so she'll be in there for 40 minutes to an hour.
And then that's not even if we have to do any type of after treatment or
medications or fluids or X-rays and things like that.
It's a completely different set of veterinary medicine that you
have to do with reptiles.
So I don't think people really think that through either because reptile
veterinary medicine is not widely talked about and it's not, it's that you think.
Again, it's you're going into this pet store with these blinders on thinking,
yeah, cool.
I'm going to get this snake.
It's going to be easy and not realizing that if this snake develops any type of
infections or any types of breathing problems, any type of bone diseases that
now your vet pill is going to be twice as much as it would be if it was a cat or
a dog, those go back into those expenses that people don't think about when they
get these animals.
Yeah.
And I mean, I feel like people typically kind of stray away from even thinking
about that because, you know, they don't want to think about their pet getting
hurt or sick or injured.
But just like with people, like, I don't know, I'm really big on either
figure out pet insurance, if it works for you, if it makes sense, or just have an
emergency fund specifically for the animal.
You don't have to think about it separate from your other finances as much as you
can.
So.
100%.
One thing that I tell a lot of people, so if people listen to this, I might have
helped them on care credit.
If you can get approved for care credit, they actually, it gives you a little
credit card and you can use that at your clinics, if your clinic accepted.
And I've seen a lot of people get saved having some really big surgeries because
of that care credit card.
Yeah.
Cause most vet clinics, you have to pay upfront right away, right?
Is that how it is?
Yeah.
As soon as you're done with services, so you come in, you should already know
that you're going to be paying an exam fee and then whatever treatments after
that, if we decide to do fluids, medications, any types of vaccines, you
typically not, there's very, very few clinics that actually do like payment
programs or pay later bill billing, no veterinarian clinics that I know of
actually doing type of payments are selling.
And so the best thing to do is to find that pet insurance or find that care
credit card for like you said, have some money saved aside for, you know,
emergency purposes.
That's the best thing that we've had dogs come in here that we've had to do
$4,000 surgeries on not often, but you know, it happens or sometimes we have
to send them to the valley for the emergency clinics and we send animals
down to the Arizona exotic clinic.
If it's a reptile or an exotic that we can't take care of up here because we
just don't have the necessary equipment.
Yeah.
So vet bills are definitely a big O expense.
And I know that we're running kind of low on time, but I have two more
quick questions for you when it comes to running the rescue, like what would
you say is the biggest problem that you kind of face on a daily or that's like,
what do you kind of face yourself?
Honestly, the biggest thing, and I know it sounds horrible, but the biggest
thing that we face daily is our expenses.
It's a $700 electric bill because of all the special lights that we have to have
on it's getting about 600 to $700 worth of food, whether it's mice or beer,
or beer driving food or pig feed or tortoise food spending about $500 every
couple of weeks on food, if not more than that, our, our medical expenses.
The, I very appreciative that I work at where I work because I'm able to get
animals in when I need to, but I still have to pay for the medicines and stuff.
And we have a good $3,000 vet bill we have here that we pay on slowly.
So it's mostly trying to get the financial support that we need to
keep our rescue functioning.
And we do good.
We do get donations.
We're not big.
It's not like we have 20 million sponsors and things like that.
And once in a while, we have a really good couple of months where we went
a grant or we went a donation or a business, for example, ACE hardware
appear decided July was going to be the house of voodoo roundup month where
they ask everybody who's buying something, Hey, do you want to round up
your change to support our sanctuary?
And they just raised $1,300 for us.
And so it's really amazing that we have this funding coming in, but I'm going
to be honest, it's going to go within two weeks, it's going to be new shells,
units, new habitats, new bedding, new food, more food.
It's just going to keep going.
And that's just that we just got to keep persevering over it.
No matter what we do again, it's why I work at a clinic.
So that way I can kind of offset the cost a little bit.
Another struggle that we really do have as though finding volunteers, people
that really actually want to dedicate their time to these animals daily.
If not weekly, trying to get people to come in and help take care of the animals
and the times that I can't, cause I am working, I'm working a part-time job
or sometimes, you know, depending on how busy we are, sometimes I come
in and do full time, but it's trying to find somebody that's willing to come
over and do all the tedious, necessary stuff.
I get so many people like, yeah, I want to volunteer.
I want to come do events with you.
But I'm like, there's a lot more than just events that comes into, I need
volunteers that are willing to clean dirty, yucky habitats.
I need volunteers that are willing to learn how to handle rattlesnakes.
So that way they know how to go into the cages and water them properly
or clean their tanks appropriately.
I need people that are willing to spend two hours, if not three hours a day
in the reptile room, feeding the bearded dragons.
And so trying to find people that are dedicated to doing that for
free is actually really hard.
We're hoping one day we'll be able to actually pay people, but right
now we're just small and we're just building.
And then just with the ACE Hardware thing, how did that turn up?
Did they just kind of come to you or were you kind of reaching out to
folks to do that or because I haven't heard people use that as a
fundraising tool before.
So I didn't know ACE Hardware did it.
So I guess Paul's ACE Hardware, which is a franchise of ACE Hardware,
they do a thing where they select a charity every month in the
summer to do the summer roundup.
And I guess people had nominated us, people that knew about us in our
community said, Hey, you should try them. So then they called us and said,
Hey, we want to choose you for July.
And so all of July, they just contacted us.
I sent over our information.
They promoted, they had their cashiers at every, after every single purchase.
Hey, do you want to donate to the Voodoo Reptiles today?
Payson's only reptile sanctuary.
It was so funny because one of the cashiers came up to me.
She's like, I gotta tell you this story.
She was like, I was sitting there telling, she was like a customer,
a customer was asking a customer if he wanted to donate.
And I said, do you want to donate to the Voodoo Reptile Foundation?
And we were dying. It was hilarious.
But people donated and it really just shows me, it really actually warrants my
heart because we're a very weird, unique group of people.
We have a very unusual name,
but the fact that our Payson community and our Gila County community is so open
and welcoming to us and not talking down to us or making us feel bad about
anything, they really, a lot of people really support and love what we do.
And that's great. And just to kind of wrap up the conversation,
if folks that aren't in Payson or in Payson or wherever they are,
if they want to find you guys or get in contact or donate or follow you on
socials, what would be the best way for people to do so?
So we are more dominantly on our Facebook page.
So you can look us up on the House of Voodoo.
It's the German spelling of house, the like fancy H-A-U-S.
Or you can find our website, which is house of voodoo sanctuary.com.
You could also just look up reptile rescue and Payson reptile sanctuary and
Payson. It will be one of the first things that comes up on Google.
We have several different forms of way of donating on our website.
The first thing you'll see on our first page is our little video.
And then underneath that will be a way to do a one-time donation.
And then if you go down a little bit further,
we have a PayPal link where you can do monthly donations.
And then there are virtual adoptions where people can go to our website,
where people can actually pay or donate twenty to five dollars a month to
virtually adopt one of our animals that are rescued.
And that helps with food and medical care and habitat and everything like that.
So that twenty five dollars a month really does go far to help those animals.
Perfect. So if you're a reptile lover and you want to support the only reptile
rescue in Payson or you're another rescue and you want to kind of get some
ideas on fundraising because you guys have quite a few different methods.
So I think that those are really something to kind of pay attention to and
look at and adopt and support one another, because I think the reptile
community needs to kind of come together and help each other out.
So I'm 100 percent agree. Yeah, 100 percent agree.
We're all here for the same purpose.
I'm actually friends with a lot of reptile rescues.
Our team is actually going up to Colorado this weekend
to the Colorado Gator Farm during Gator Fest.
And basically what we get to do is it was the really cool idea that Colorado
Gator Farm did. They have so many alligators and it's really hard to
medically assess or medicate small injuries on all these alligators that
they have. So they have people come up for a big Gator Fest once a year
and they throw in volunteers in the Gator Pits to go wrestle alligators
and help medicate them. And then whoever wrestles the largest gator
the fastest time wins like a championship belt or something like that.
So it's actually really cool and our whole team is looking forward to doing that.
So we work with a lot of different rescues as well partners and friends
because we're all here for the same goal. It's not about who's better than anybody else.
It's about how we can help these animals.
Help more people help more critters is the the cornerstone of it.
But Victoria, thank you. I know you got to hop off.
I appreciate your time and yeah, keep on keeping on.
Thank you so much. And you're doing a great job, Ranger.
Thank you so much for having us on.
Thank you all for listening to today's episode.
I think today's episode really highlights the struggles that animal rescues face
with the absolute flood of intakes they face on a daily basis.
And of course, the classic struggle of having enough funding.
It's something that every rescue that I've talked to has struggled with,
you know, a million animals and not a million dollars for sure.
So it really just highlights the importance that they face with
not only folks taking a active stance in their community and with their own animal husbandry
of ensuring that the animals they have, they are able to properly care for,
provide the food, the husbandry, the everything the animal needs to live a happy and healthy life,
including spaying and neutering at times.
But also just the importance of reaching out to local rescues and seeing where you can help,
whether it's just five or six bucks here or there every month
or an hour or two of your time once or twice a week.
It really can go a huge way in terms of them helping out these critters
and really just being a voice for the voiceless.
And I think it also really highlights the resourcefulness that those that run
animal rescues and sanctuaries really embody on a daily basis.
You know, they're in there in the trenches, making the magic happen
with whatever they have and what they're able to pull together to help out these critters.
And I'm going to have to look into that ACE Hardware Roundup Fundraiser
that they did a little bit more.
I think that's a really interesting thing.
And that's something that I'm going to take into my future trainings
and other nonprofits that I work with in the future.
But that's another story.
If you'd like to support the House of Voodoo Reptile Sanctuary,
please be sure to check out all their social media and website links
in the podcast notes down below.
And if you'd like to join a community of entrepreneurs and nonprofit leaders
working to make the world a better place,
please be sure to check out our school community, NeverPeak.
And all that information will be down in the show notes as well.
But until next time, remember to have fun, stay safe, and be yourself.
I'll see you all next week.
Bye.