'Wildman Phil’ loves the creepy, crawly world

In his 15 years of handling snakes, lizards, tortoises and bugs for the Casa Grande-based Desert Wildlife Presentations, Philip “Wildman Phil” Rakoci has snuggled up with a 13-foot Burmese python named Patches, introduced children and adults to Stumpy, a three-legged tortoise with a wheel attached to his shell to help him get around, and let tarantulas and other bugs crawl all over him.

But there is one desert creature that Rakoci won’t handle anymore.

“I was doing an outreach class for Central Arizona College on January 8 of 1998,” recalls Rakoci. “We went outside at the end to go over a rattlesnake and how it all works and I ended up getting bit in the leg. I found out about five, six hours later, as they were helicoptering me to the Good Samaritan poison control center, that I was allergic to rattlesnake venom.

“It’s very unusual — I was only the fifth person at that time that they had ever known of that happening,” Rakoci says. “So basically the bottom line is, I cannot get bit again — if I do I’ll be dead in less than half an hour.”

While rattlesnakes are no longer a part of Rakoci’s Desert Wildlife Presentations shows — which he gives in school classrooms, retirement homes, private parties, the Boyce Thompson Arboretum and special events such as the Tempe Music Festival and the Subway Fresh Fit 500 at Phoenix International Raceway — Rakoci still brings out Patches and his other pythons, a variety of other snakes such as corn snakes and milk snakes, bugs such as stink beetles, centipedes and millipedes and a plethora of lizards.

Rakoci says his first love as a boy was sharks, but the Casa Grande native says the surroundings weren’t conducive to seeing many sharks, so he started hiking into the desert and examining the wildlife surrounding his boyhood home.

“When I was about 12 or 13 my mom actually let me keep my first snake that I brought home, a little 12-inch nightsnake,” Rakoci says. “Then that one factored into another snake, then another snake and things started from there.

“When I was 13 my next-door neighbor was a first-grade teacher,” Rakoci says. “I had a small collection, maybe six or seven animals, and she asked if I would come to school with her one day and show her class, which I did, then the other first-grade teachers said, 'Hey, can you come to my room, and my room?’ ”

After high school, Rakoci began to introduce more classrooms to his collection of creepy crawlies. After college, he founded Desert Wildlife Presentations while working at what he calls “a real job.”

“I kind of realized that a lot of the kids here don’t know about the animals they live with,” Rakoci says. “So I contacted some schools and said, 'I have these animals, do you want me to bring them by?’ and they (said) 'Sure, go ahead.’ ”

Rakoci, who in addition to his statewide presentations travels each year to Colorado and Texas to teach about Arizona’s desert wildlife, says he has been able to make a living doing what he’d probably be doing anyway.

“I finally realized that I like what I’m doing,” Rakoci says, “and I can beat the system making a living doing what I like.

“Obviously I’m just a little boy who never grew up — I still come home with lizards in my pocket.”

Desert Wildlife Presentations
When: 4 p.m. Monday
Where: Casa Grande Public Library, 449 N. Dry Lake St.
Cost: Free with registration
Information: To register, call (520) 421-8710, Ext. 5140. Contact Desert Wildlife Presentations at (520) 510-9500 or desertwildlife.net