By Reid Forgrave
Enquirer staff writer

NORTH COLLEGE HILL - Neighbors knew a woman living nearby had iguanas because a month ago she mentioned she'd been losing sleep because two of her iguanas had been fighting.

And they knew she was an animal lover, as she would come into and out of her house with all sorts of new animals - rabbits, birds and cats.

But what residents didn't know - until their quiet, 44-year-old neighbor died Saturday at University Hospital after being bitten by one her venomous snakes earlier in the week - was that the modest, unassuming two-story house at 1830 Emerson Ave was home to at least nine poisonous snakes and more than a dozen other snakes, lizards and alligators.

Police believe an urutu pit viper bit the woman on Labor Day, Sept. 6, and neighbors said she drove herself to Mercy Fairfield Hospital. She was later transported to University Hospital, where she remained in critical condition until Saturday evening, when police received word that she died.

"We have no idea how she made it to the hospital in the first place," said North College Hill police Sgt. Robert Kidd.

The woman's name was not released Saturday because police had not yet been able to notify her family members.

Saturday morning, officials from University Hospital called North College Hill police to let them know more poisonous snakes might be inside the house in the suburban neighborhood of modest two-story homes.

Police broke down the woman's front door, and three herpetologists from Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens entered the house.

"All I know is, those policemen were pretty scared," said Helen Amrein, who lives two doors down from the reptile house.

An ambulance waited outside the house in case a venomous snake attacked.

"We're going into an environment we're not familiar with, and we don't know where these animals are," said Winston Card, the zoo's conservation program manager for reptiles, amphibians, and aquatics, who entered the home with two reptile keepers. "It's just not safe. There are people who do this safely, but there are people who don't do it safely, and this is the consequence."

In the first place the reptile keepers checked an upstairs bedroom, they found more than a half-dozen large lizards running around. Among the animals roaming free around the house were two monitor lizards, two alligators, one rhinoceros iguana, two Solomon Islands tree skinks and one tegu lizard.

All the venomous snakes were in secure plastic cases throughout the house, police and zoo officials said. But the herpetologists found non-venomous animals under boxes and under piles of clothes.

"We just kept turning more things over the more we looked," Card said. "They're animals we deal with every day. But we'd never know what we were going to pick up when we turned something over."

The herpetologists spent hours Saturday afternoon carefully picking through the house, and they believe they retrieved all the reptiles from inside the home.

But there was no way to know for sure.

"There's no guarantee we got everything out of the house because there's no idea how man she kept in there," Card said. "We think we got all of them, but we don't know for sure."

Zoo officials said all the animals appeared to be healthy, although veterinarians will give the snakes and lizards physical examinations during the next several days.

Neighbors were bewildered Saturday evening after having learned that the woman who'd lived there for eight years had kept these animals.

"It's a little weird," said Tawnia Goodlander, who lives across the street from the reptile house, and whose daughter - and six-month-old granddaughter - live next door. "We knew she had iguanas, but we didn't know she had twenty-something snakes inside. You'd think maybe someone out on a farm would have something like this, but in a residential area with children around, you gotta wonder why she'd have these poisonous snakes."

Ohio law prohibits anyone from keeping animals that aren't indigenous to the state, and a North College Hill ordinance prohibits anyone from keeping dangerous animals.

There is no law prohibiting the sale of exotic animals across state lines, police said.

"They're not something people should be keeping as pets," Card said. "It's not responsible to keep these venomous pets in her house in a residential neighborhood. It put her life at risk, and it put our lives at risk, too."

Pet parade

Among the reptiles found inside a North College Hill home Saturday:

• One gaboon viper (venomous).

• Two monitor lizards.

• Two alligators.

• Two urutu pit vipers (venomous).

• One rhinoceros iguana.

• One shieldnose cobra (venomous).

• Two western hognose snakes.

• One rat snake.

• Two rhinoceros vipers (highly venomous).

• One timber rattlesnake (venomous).

• One albino western rattlesnake (venomous).

• Two Solomon Islands skinks.

• One monocled cobra (highly venomous).

• One tegu lizard.

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E-mail rforgrave@enquirer.com