The team at Reptile Ron’s Animal Presentations work with more than 115 species of animals, including snakes, lizards and mammals. Photo via Cody Guill

A Central Valley family owned company is here to bring scaly, furry and feathered friends to a school or wild event near you.

Reptile Ron’s Animal Presentations, owned by Ron Guill and his son, Cody Guill, has been showing their rescued animals at birthday parties, school assemblies and in classrooms since 2010.

“Around 2012, the business really started to grow. At that point we were doing more than just school programs. We were doing after school programs, libraries, all sorts of events” said Cody Guill.

With clientele growing, the Guills hope to start a nonprofit rescue for exotic animals. Guill said they already applied for a 501(c)(3) tax designation for Reptile Ron’s Rescue and hope to have that running sometime soon.

People donate and surrender reptiles and birds to the company every day, and they try their best to rehome as many animals as possible.

According to Guill, they adopt animals out as often as possible. Recently, someone adopted 30 tortoises and another 15 were surrendered.

 

The rescue work is an extension of the animal presentations business, which the Guills want to continue growing.

 “We want to do a lot more community events and even host people to come and do volunteer things,” said Guill.

A challenge they face is finding employee presenters who are comfortable with public speaking and working with animals and children.

On the nonprofit side, people will get the chance to volunteer directly with the animals. The program will help people who are homeschooled and students going through the veterinary programs at Fresno State to get the volunteer hours they need.

The nonprofit would also like to work with different parts of the community to host free presentations, such as at Valley Children’s Hospital, for burn victims and students from low-income school districts.

Whether it’s a birthday party or an assembly of 200 children, the Guills try to give every child a chance to have hands-on experience with the animals. They believe this is the best way for children to learn and understand the animals.

Each presentation is around 45 to 50 minutes long and unless requested otherwise, they will bring animals from all over the world. Depending on what schools are teaching, or the theme of the party, customers can also request certain types of animals, like those only from the desert or the rainforest.

“My goal at the end of the show is to have every kid, who wanted to, have a chance to participate with every animal, not just one,” Guill said.

 

Due to how many animals come in and out through rescue, and how quickly some of these animals reproduce, Guill doesn’t know exactly how many animals they have.

However, he knows that Reptile Ron’s Animal Presentations has over 115 species of animals. These range from ball python snakes, bearded dragons, macaws, giant rabbits and more. Almost all of these animals have been rescued.

Each animal goes through a time period of observation to monitor how they react to being handled and touched. The staff works hard to understand the signs of stress in all of their animals.

“A snake doesn’t know me, a snake knows a situation that it’s either familiar with, or not familiar with,” Guill said.

While it’s not a regular occurance, if an animal is showing signs of stress or discomfort, they will ask the guests to change their voice levels or level of activity. If necessary, they will put the animal back in their habitat to protect everyone’s, including the animal’s, safety.

Reptile Ron’s Animal Presentations has big things planned for the future as a family that cares about community and their no-legged to eight-legged friends.

 “We work with friends and family; and we spend our time hanging out with kids and teaching them about animals and touching animals. It’s like the most fun thing we could do on a day-to-day basis,” Guill said.