Rick Neale

FLORIDA TODAY

VIERA — Three dozen exotic-animal fans crowded around a whiteboard list outside Nyami Nyami River Lodge, studying a cornucopia of 102 critters including red-ear slider turtles, a leopard gecko, bearded dragons, boa constrictors, 10 lovebirds and a sulcata tortoise.

These foreign-to-Florida beasts had been surrendered Saturday during an Exotic Pet Amnesty Day at Brevard Zoo, conducted by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

"We're going to randomly select the order that you adopt. Once you go through, you will choose an animal from the categories that you are approved from," Jason Wagman, FWC exotic pet amnesty program specialist, told the state-approved adopters.

"For the first round, you'll choose one animal, unless the animals are going together — it might be two or three, if the owner requested that they go together," Wagman said.

People dropped off unwanted fauna at the zoo from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., where they were processed by volunteers. Trevor Zachariah, the zoo's veterinarian, performed initial evaluations on each animal — and he remarked that Saturday's event yielded the most birds he had ever seen at an exotic pet amnesty day.

FWC exotic pet amnesty day hits Brevard Zoo on Saturday

Indeed, volunteers created a makeshift aviary of 44 feathered fowl along the sidewalk outside Nyami Nyami River Lodge. In the midst of this squawking flock, five green Quaker parrots shared a cage, which rested on the sidewalk between two yellow parakeets and two Hahn's macaws.

One citron cockatoo was named Bogie Captive. She was at least 20 years old and was domestically hatched, according to her FWC information sheet.

Atop a nearby table, a black and white adult guinea pig of unknown sex rested amid wood chips inside a plastic container. A few feet away, wriggling white cloth sacks contained ball pythons, a Hog Island boa and a Honduran milk snake.

"It's an opportunity for people to take their exotic pets and re-home them, no questions asked. No penalties. No cost. Legally or illegally held, it doesn't matter," Wagman said.

"It's a preventative measure for having these animals potentially be sent to the wild, where they would all be considered non-native species. But some of them may become invasive. They could be detrimental to the environment, like the pythons in the Everglades and Nile monitors in West Palm Beach," he said.

Five leopard lizards drew a crowd of onlookers to their homemade screened enclosure. One handful of attendees showed up carrying two leashed raccoons and a leashed striped skunk. Neither dogs nor cats were permitted.

To surrender a non-native pet, call the FWC Exotic Species Hotline at 888-IVE-GOT1 (888-483-4681).

Array of animals surrendered at Exotic Pet Amnesty Day

Contact Neale at 321-242-3638, rneale@floridatoday.com or follow @RickNeale1 on Twitter