'LIZARD LADY' ELISA MARTIN OF WOODLAND HILLS GAINING REPUTATION FOR RESCUING REPTILES CHAMELEON CHAMPION IS EVER TRUE TO HER COLORS.

Byline: DANA BARTHOLOMEW

Staff Writer

WOODLAND HILLS - When Elisa Martin took home two water dragons for her twin girls, she was leery of the lengthy lizards -- and screamed while tossing them crickets.

Six years later, the Woodland Hills mom houses two dozen chameleons and heads the only known chameleon rescue in the nation.

"They call me the chameleon nut," said Martin, 40, whose collection will be on display this month during a reptile and amphibian exhibit in Griffith Park.

"I don't know why," she said, staring into the goggle eyes of her friends. "I just like chameleons."

Tucked away in the back of her eggplant-color home is a chameleon condo containing 22 brilliant lizards, four snakes and a box turtle sunning in an outdoor planter.

When customs agents intercept smuggled chameleons from Africa or Madagascar at Los Angeles International Airport, they often end up at Martin's sanctuary.

When pet owners tire of the horned lizards as hard to raise as African violets, they find their way into her reptile house.

Pet shops call Martin with sick chameleons.

One day, a mailman scooped a foot-long veiled chameleon off a curb and brought it to Martin's nonprofit Chameleon Education and Outreach.

She cares for crippled chameleons. She rehabilitates club-footed chameleons and those with bone disease. She finds good homes for chameleons with crooked casques, or crowns.

She once took in a 100-pound Burmese python castoff -- all 16 feet, 3 inches -- in a messy divorce.

When Reggie the alligator was discovered in Lake Machado, Martin was one of the first ones on the scene.

"I always pick the old, pathetic ones at pet shops, thinking, 'I can make 'em better," she said.

Her chameleon outreach extends to proper care for the bright green lizards -- plenty of heat, lots of water, screened cages, a jungle mist, the right bugs and minerals, and a little sun.

She breeds several difficult chameleon species.

She also does chameleon workshops for enthusiasts and show-and-tells at schools about the reptile known -- wrongly -- for mirroring the colors of its environment.

"I'd like to clone her and make a hundred like her," said Jarron Lucas, president of the Southwestern Herpetologists Society, based in Los Angeles, of which Martin serves as secretary. "She's among five people I know that really know how to care for chameleons."

"She's very respected in the reptile world," added Sophia Wong, a society member of Chatsworth. "She really spends time to help reptiles that need care and good homes."

One day while on an overnight "herping expedition" with the snake and lizard lovers of her society, Wong said Martin cut her trip short because, she had said, "My chameleons need me."

It was while peeking into a cage of a pet shop that the former paralegal from the Bay Area spotted a tiny emaciated chameleon clawing at its habitat. She had to have it.

"I said, 'Oh, my God, it's so cute!"'

She took it home and later discovered it was a rare-in-captivity dwarf panther, which she named Lenny.

In the next five years, she read everything she could find on caring for chameleons and called the top experts in the field.

Her humidified chameleon condo is now lined with cages, each containing a chameleon with its own potted ficus or shefflera. In hot months, they bask in summer homes on her patio.

On Friday, she found a frightened cat trapped in a tree above her bird feeders.

"Another rescue," said her husband, Jeff Hinkle, 54. "It's like the law of attraction: they just show up."

While her husband and teenage daughters help her with her chameleons, her mother refuses to sleep near the reptiles that resemble tiny triceratops.

"Some people think I'm crazy with bugs and lizards. Some people think they're gross. They're not gross at all," she said.

At times she looks at her lizards, wonders what she got into, then thinks of her very first chameleon, now buried under a patio pot.

"And I say: Thanks, Lenny," Martin said.

dana.bartholomew(at)dailynews.com

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If you go

Live reptiles from around the world will be displayed at the Southwestern Herpetologists Society's 25th annual Reptile & Amphibian Exhibit, open to the public from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 29 and 30 at Friendship Auditorium, 3201 Riverside Drive, Los Angeles. Donation: $3; children are free.

For information on Chameleon Education and Outreach, go to www.chameo.org. For the Southwest Herpetologists Society, go to www.swhs.org

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4 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- color) Tucked away in Elisa Martin's eggplant-color home is a chameleon condo containing 22 brilliant lizards.

(2 -- color) A veiled chameleon peers out from its enclosure.

(3 -- color) Elisa Martin holds a dwarf Jackson's chameleon at her Woodland Hills home. Martin's collection will be on display this month during a reptile and amphibian exhibit in Griffith Park.

(4 -- color) A veiled chameleon is shown at Elisa Martin's home rescue center. "They call me the chameleon nut," Martin says.

Tom Mendoza/Staff Photographer

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If you go (see text)