Anchorage Daily News

In mid-Spenard, in a tiny house the color of salmon roe, sit racks of trays and 30-gallon barrels crawling with crickets, mealworms and mice.

A little shop of horrors to the warm- blooded of the species. A gourmet buffet to those whose blood runs cold.

This is the Alaskan Reptile and Cricket Ranch, Dianna Smith, proprietor.

It's no picnic being a bug and rodent rancher. Smith has hundreds of thousands of worms and bugs to tend to. Plus, she just got a shipment of 748 mice, and they are some righteous breeding, eating and excreting machines. Chores keep her busy seven days a week. Filling feed troughs, cleaning pens, launching the occasional escapee roundup.

Smith wants her charges healthy and happy, even though they're destined to be lunch. No, especially because they're destined to be lunch. People's pets depend on them -- snakes, lizards, frogs and birds in par- ticular.

Although the reptile part of her business isn't happening yet, she swears it's coming. Designer snakes, lizards and such.

"Eventually I'm going to have my own little retail," she said. "I've dreamed of this ever since I was little girl. If it kills me I'm going to have myself a reptile store."

For now, Smith is focusing on the feeder side of the business and expects to be ready to sell to the general public in a couple of months. In the meantime, she's selling mostly to the Bird Treatment and Learning Center in Anchorage and the WildBird Rehabilitation Center in the Valley. During baby bird season, she goes through more than 100,000 one half to one-inch long mealworms per month. Visualize something like 350 heaping handfuls of brown, writhing worms. Or not.

GONE BUGGY

Smith says she's been a "bug nut" all her life. Growing up with five brothers may have had something to do with it.

When she was 8, one of those brothers, a big one who worked in a grocery store, brought home a tarantula that had stowed away in a banana box. He set it loose on the kitchen floor, then sent Smith on a mission into the kitchen. She flipped on the light and there it was, all big and hairy.

She could have shrieked, which would have delighted her brother. She was not about to give him the satisfaction.

"Oh, what a BIG spider," she hollered.

She ended up keeping it as a pet.

"That was it," she said. "I was hooked."

Reptiles soon followed.

Her current pet lineup goes like this: Two American bull dog/pitbull mixes, a bearded dragon, a fire skink, a leopard gecko, two corn snakes, a king snake, three anoles, three fire belly toads and two tree frogs.

They eat well.

FORWARD VISION

If Smith hadn't faced some harsh realities a few years back it's doubtful she'd be pursuing this passion of hers.

Her family has a history of retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary and progressive eye disease. Four of her five brothers and her oldest son have the condition. As does she.

"I've been blind in my left eye my whole life," she said. "And then the RP hit me in my middle age, so now I have center vision in my right eye, my only vision.

"I've done a lot of in-home care and housecleaning; I just love hard work. And then my vision wouldn't let me do that any more. It took me a while to finally fess up that it was time for me to seek financial aid. So I got on Social Security and all that."

Smith was able to get her business off the ground with a lot of help from the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation, as well as the Alaska Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired, the University of Alaska Human Resource Center and other programs. She started raising mealworms and crickets in Ketchikan before moving to Anchorage in 2002. Then she added mice. But health issues kept getting in the way of her business really taking off.

A doggy-pile of ailments had her on nine different prescription drugs, including pain medication for osteoporosis. After shedding a bunch of weight, she got fed up and threw all her meds away last December. She's since gone organic and is now maintaining her health through diet, supplements and other holistic means.

It's made all the difference, she says.

HOUSEMATES FROM HELL

This go-around is it, Smith says. For one thing, she finally has her operation out from under her own roof.

When she and her long-time boyfriend moved up from Ketchikan, the first house they rented had a sauna, which she took one look at and thought, "perfect for my mealworms." They like it toasty warm.

"I had the mealworms in one bedroom and the mice in the other, and we were sleeping in the living room."

Renting the Spenard place has given Smith her home life back. The front room has three large mouse racks, with six mice per tray and 54 trays per rack, the empty ones ready for babies. A side room, which she keeps between 82 and 84 degrees, is for containers of wiggly mealworms in various life stages of growth -- egg, worm, pupa, beetle. In a huddle of plastic garbage cans are the crickets, big, small, hopping about as if on pogo sticks, their chirping reminiscent of a warm summer night in the country.

The soundtrack in the front room isn't as quaint.

"The squeaking you're hearing is probably mating," Smith says. "The males are very sexually aggressive. As soon as they get up in the morning you'll hear them eating and then that's it. It's time for the girls."

If things go according to plan, Smith should have nearly 4,000 "pinkies" in a couple of weeks. Bring them on. She's ready.

Smith sells her feeder mice fresh or frozen. Pinkies, peachies, fuzzies, hoppers, weanlings and adults, large or small. The frozen are pre-whacked.

"I use CO2," she said, "and I have a (plastic) box. What I do is put them in there, close it and then I gas them. It's pretty quick. They don't know what hit them."

Still, it's not always easy for her. Her oldest son, Clint, helps with this and other chores.

Maria Heidkamp Scully, who breeds and sells snakes at alaskareptiles.com, also sells feeder mice, though hers are shipped frozen from the Lower 48. She's thinks it's great Smith is doing this, giving reptiles more opportunity to eat fresh and local.

As for the crickets and mealworms -- especially the mealworms -- Smith's timing couldn't be better.

Mealworms, also known as "crawly gold" in certain circles, are a hot item, especially following a nationwide shortage that began last summer. Smith believes pesticides in the wheat bran they eat is the prime suspect. Whether true or not, she's feeding her mealworms wheat bran grown organically, and they are thriving.

Among those who appreciate organic mealworms is Karen Coady, who met Smith through the Alaska Center for the Blind. She's the center's program manager, but also a baby bird foster mom for the Bird TLC.

"As my baby bird mentor said, a healthy worm is a healthy bird," Coady said.

Until Smith came along, Coady and other wild bird rehab volunteers would order their mealworms from the Lower 48. With luck they would arrive the following week. And with the mealworm shortage, Smith's supply saved the day.

"When we need mealworms for our babies, we need mealworms," Coady said.

Smith's worms, she said, kept her baby birds alive.

"She's been an absolute lifesaver. I am eternally grateful she is here."

Contact the Alaska Reptile & Cricket Ranch: alaskareptile2004@yahoo.com

Find Debra McKinney online at adn.com/contact/dmckinney or call 257-4465.

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