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A passion for pets

Fondness for creatures that live under the sea leads a man to take the plunge on a retail journey.

By CHUIN-WEI YAP, Times Staff Writer
Published January 4, 2008

LAND O'LAKES

Meet the fountain crab.

It is a little critter with a smooth shell, the color of desert camouflage uniforms, and it has a habit of trying to hide by covering its face with its claws.

This makes the fountain crab look like a badly trained soldier.

But its name comes from its ability to perform a childish trick, which becomes obvious as Mike Carver brings one close to the water surface.

"They can spit water about this high," he said, putting his finger about 2 inches above the water.

The crab is underwater. A small stream visibly pulses from its tiny mouth. But it isn't spitting today. Carver puts it back on the tank bed. He looks a little guilty.

"My wife is always telling me to stop playing with the animals," he said.

That would be Denege Carver. The couple and Mike's parents run Scales and Wings, a 1-month-old pet store off State Road 54 and Oak Grove Boulevard, a way station for weird and wonderful creatures that swim, crawl and fly.

Mostly though, they are things that swim, because that's Mike Carver's first passion. He has been keeping fish - that's using the term broadly - since he was 6.

He introduces some of the residents in the gurgling, bubbling tanks of Scales and Wings:

Here's a dolphin shark. Looks like neither dolphin nor shark. Apparently, it looks like a man that turned into a fish.

"I don't know if you saw that old Don Knotts movie, The Incredible Mr. Limpet," Carver says. "When he turned into a fish, he looks just like that."

There's a spotted puffer fish, fat and sulky. Likes live crayfish and mussels, and he has a temper.

"If I ever feed someone before him, he splashes water at me out of the tank," Carver says.

Here's a chocolate chip starfish, which looks like a chocolate chip cookie. Shark eggs that look like gremlin pods. Upside down jellyfish. Banded shrimp with magnificent whiskers that would tear each other apart if a turf war erupts over tank bed detritus.

Mike and Denege Carver say it wasn't the animals that brought them together.

But animals were always around.

They sat next to each other in biology class in high school. She used to tease him about raising pigs. They were dating in 1990 when his black standard poodle, Brishauna, got a starring role in the movie Edward Scissorhands, which was filming at the time in the Land O'Lakes community of Oak Grove.

They're both 36, and they've been together for 23 years.

Both went to Hillsborough Community College. "Harvard of the Highway," Denege calls it.

He worked for a time with Roy Brooks, the veterinarian at Cypress Creek Animal Hospital in Land O'Lakes. She worked in animal control and later became a nurse at the Orient Road Jail in Tampa. He became a sheriff's deputy at the Falkenburg Road Jail.

They got married in 1995 and now have a family of pets that includes three dogs Brishauna has passed on, an African spur thigh tortoise, a cherry head conure and a 110-gallon tank of saltwater creatures.

And, since last month, Scales and Wings.

The birds in Scales and Wings were added because "we didn't just want to do fish only," Mike Carver says. This explains Honey, a big blue-and-gold macaw that hangs out at the front of the store, an ambassador for the menagerie of fluttering colors in a small room behind her. Honey's affectionate, but she'll set you back $1,465.

There were no reptiles at first. The Carvers only sold reptile food supplies and equipment. Then customers asked them to stock some of the cold-blooded brood, and along came the snakes, frogs, iguanas and tortoises.

Denege Carver grew up with parents who were wildlife rescuers and kept snakes and skunks as a kid.

She's a child again when she kneels down next to a small African spur thigh tortoise.

It's no bigger than a colada cup, but watch out.

"When they get to 150 pounds, they have to live outside," she said.

The Carvers have one at home. They are thinking of building a kennel for it - an igloo, they call it - but they'd have to sink cinder walls into the ground around it before that. Those critters are master burrowers.

Mike's reaching in to nudge a frog. It looks like a smooth green pebble at first. Then legs everywhere, with tiny yellow toes at the end.

That's the only occasion Denege looks a little queasy.

"They're fine when they sit still," she says. "When they move, I don't like them."

Chuin-Wei Yap can be reached at cyap@sptimes.com or (813) 909-4613.

If you go

Scales and Wings

24408 State Road 54

Lutz, FL 33559

Telephone: (813) 948-6611

[Last modified January 3, 2008, 22:33:23]