They are everywhere, but you can hardly notice. Under a formica desk, kept hidden inside a heated tank, a three-foot wild lizard snoozes without being disturbed by the phone or the customers who come to the Social Tees T-shirt factory, in the East Village in lower Manhattan. On the right size of this tiny office room, a pair of pythons lies in two other tanks covered by a blue tablecloth. A smaller second room shelters some 20 more snakes and six turtles, sharing the space with a couple of iguanas stretching in a corner above a freezer full of dead mice, the food of most of these creatures.

"Once you lose your previous ideas toward reptiles, you realize that they are fascinating beautiful animals," says Robert Shapiro, raising the tablecloth to disclosure his favorite python, a fat 18-foot female. Owner of the Social Tees and breeder of some 300 animals kept at home and his friends' houses in New York City, Shapiro rescues about 3,000 reptiles abandoned by New Yorkers each year.

The number of the wild orphans jumped since the city approved a new health code last summer, prohibiting wild animals to be sold in the five boroughs. Along with hundreds of other species listed, iguanas, snakes, and caimans are now illegal in the city and their breeders are required to apply for a special license, proving qualification to keep the animals. According to an article published by The New York Times in October 1999, there may be 10,000 snake-owning households and 20,000 lizard-owning households in New York City.