Downers Grove man mixes creatures, comedy for kids

Dave DiNaso is terrified.

He's standing in front of, what, maybe 400 elementary school students at Christ the King School in Chicago and his stomach is churning like a 1950s washing machine.

He's got his hands wrapped around a 4½-foot iguana, but it's not the reptile making him sweat.

This is the moment DiNaso has been waiting for, the semi-scary, semi-exciting moment that will determine his professional future. It's his first shot at trying to make a living by performing with exotic animals in front of a crowd and if it wasn't so important to him it might sound like the opening of a bad joke: A man, an alligator and an iguana walk into a school ...

Who could have predicted it? DiNaso says he was the kind of kid who became the class clown to hide his shyness. He attended Illinois State University and majored in communications and then tried to find a place in the shirt-and-tie world, but nothing seemed to click. He just wasn't cut out, it appears, to sell Canon copiers.

Whenever he thought about his future, whenever he was really honest with himself, he kept coming back to a simple idea: He wanted to work with animals - a passion since childhood - and he wanted to be his own boss.

Which is why, on April 15, 1993, the 25-year-old man is standing in front of a room full of expectant kids, holding that iguana and trying to take a deep breath. You can be as nervous as you want, he tells himself. You just can't let them see it.

Travels with reptilesSeventeen years later, DiNaso still regularly saunters into crowded rooms carrying an iguana - and a monitor lizard and a python and all sorts of other creatures - only now he's a lot more relaxed. The owner of Dave DiNaso's Traveling World of Reptiles has brought his collection of animals to literally thousands of shows across northern Illinois and Indiana -- including a recent stop at Naperville's Owen Elementary School in Indian Prairie Unit District 204 - and the public appetite for his performances seems to be growing like a hungry crocodile. His business has become successful enough to add a second animal expert to his team -- Chris Boerema -- and a third, Jim Galeno, who is expected to start making appearances later this year. DiNaso, who lives in Downers Grove, says he performed about 40 shows during his first year. His company now fields 50 or 100 calls a week and is on pace to put on a record 1,000 performances in 2010.The bulk of those are split fairly evenly, he says, among schools, libraries, Scout events and home birthday parties. Throw in the occasional corporate outing or county fair and you get a pretty good impression of his working life.When he arrives he usually brings about 15 animals with him -- they're kept at several private facilities south of Chicago -- including what the guys at Traveling World call the Big Five: a python, an alligator, a tortoise, a monitor lizard and, of course, an iguana. The shows can run almost any length up to 75 minutes and are designed to be "funny, educational and extremely hands on," he says, with an emphasis on the funny. DiNaso will tell you he's not out to convince anybody to take a sudden liking to spiders or snakes or scorpions. He just wants people to understand the place such animals (they're not all reptiles) have in the ecosystem and even in the creation of lifesaving medicines. The best way to do that, he says, is to bring his audiences into close contact with creatures they otherwise might be happy to avoid. Get the chance to pet an alligator's back or slide your fingers over a python - all in a safe environment - and you may find yourself thinking about them in a whole new way. And even if the thought of a slithering snake still gives you a case of the crazy, creepy crawlies, you'll probably have a good time laughing at most of DiNaso's jokes.Lessons with humorWatch a Traveling World show and it's likely you'll learn something about the animals from a guy who knows from firsthand experience. Depending on his audience, DiNaso might even provide you with tips on how to care for some of the animals as pets - and which ones are better left to the experts. But this isn't Biology 101 and DiNaso is even more concerned that you have a good time."You'll be laughing from the opening of the show until the end," he says.Rose Johnson, who handles programming for Indian Trails Public Library in Wheeling, has brought DiNaso to her facility at least twice. She says she likes his sense of humor and his ability to get his points across with a lighthearted approach that's "not like death and doom.""He gives kids a hands-on experience they otherwise might never have," she says. "They get to pet the snake; to see these things up close and personal." Donna Davis, an art teacher at Owen, brought DiNaso to her school because third-graders are learning about the rain forest and she wanted them to see - and touch - some of the creatures for themselves."He (DiNaso) is very much into talking to the students about respecting the animals and the environment," she says. When her students begin their art projects next week, they'll be able to draw on their memories and pictures from DiNaso's Web site as their models. DiNaso and his cohorts know their animals, know how to handle them and know how to explain what makes them special to people of all ages.None of that matters, though, if they aren't able to work their audience and find ways to make people giggle.Whether it's at a school or a library, he says, "it's a good break for the kids to see a funny show. The educational aspect is just a bonus."The jokes are more Moe Howard than Oscar Wilde. DiNaso, for example, says he usually allows one of his snakes to slide up a kid's shirt sleeve and then down the other. Every once in a while, though, the snake decides to head south. "Oh, no!" DiNaso will shout, "not the underpants detour!"Much of the show's humor, he says, comes from the kids themselves. He remembers working at a library and allowing a 4- or 5-year-old boy to pet one of the iguanas. The boy starts to laugh.What's so funny, DiNaso asks innocently. "I'm laughing," the little boy says, "because your iguana feels just like my grandma."It doesn't biteDiNaso says he's now put on roughly 8,000 shows and there's been one happy constant - no one has ever been bitten.This one isn't a joke. He knows that's a record that must continue; the first mishap could be his company's last. He says his team combats the possibility by carefully monitoring the animals and adhering to strict rules about how and where audience members can touch the creatures. "If you don't pet the head," he says, "you don't get bit."He says he works only with creatures he has raised from babies because "you have to know the personality of the animal" and none of the show animals are venomous.Offer him your 5-year-old anaconda and he may help you find a home for it, but it most definitely won't be in one of his shows.Caution, he says, is always at the forefront. Nobody wants to be the next Siegfried and Roy. "We don't trust the animals," he says. "That's when an accident happens." He insists he's never had a single serious complaint about any of his shows, either from the people who hired him or from animal rights groups. There was one time, though, that a woman chided him because "the animals aren't as colorful as they look of your Web site." That one, he says, hardly counts.17 and countingSeventeen years ago, DiNaso could hardly have imagined his job could lead him to travel to five continents, to walk the Serengeti Plain and to dive in search of Great White Sharks. He couldn't have imagined he'd play an occasional role behind the scenes on a TV animal show or that he'd perform in front of, by his own estimate, more than a million people. He says he still gets a kick out of introducing his animals to crowds of all sizes and basking in the oohs and ahhs and laughter. He still gets pumped when he sees the excitement in a kid's face when they get up close and personal with an African savannah monitor lizard or a snapping turtle. It must be nice to have found your dream job, someone asks, but what do you plan to do when you grow up? He laughs."I work with kids," he says. "I don't have to grow up." To contact Traveling World of Reptiles call (888) 754-8437 or visit travelingworldofreptiles.com.False20001454Students at Naperville's Owen Elementary School get to pet the back of an alligator during a visit by Dave DiNaso's Traveling World of Reptiles. DiNaso is not above shaking water from the 'gator on unsuspecting kids.Bev Horne | Staff PhotographerFalse