Two new volunteers at the Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center are helping raise awareness about venomous creatures, and in return geting a place to sleep and mice to eat.

The volunteers, a pair of gila monsters, are on loan to the center through a special permit from the Arizona Game and Fish Department, said Jude McNally, assistant director of the Poison Control Center.

The gila monsters were captured by the state when their colony had to be moved, McNally said, and because they had been in captivity, they could not be released back into the wild.

The Poison Control Center uses the gila monsters in some of its presentations to groups such as employees, emergency room doctors, nurses and paramedics, McNally said. He said although the center is asked to give more than 40 presentations a year on venomous animals throughout Tucson and Southern Arizona, the gila monsters only go to local events so as not to cause too much stress to the animals.

Gila monsters are nest raiders in the wild, McNally said, but in captivity, they eat "mousesicles," or frozen mice. McNally keeps the creatures in his home because the Poison Control Center's office is in a section of University Medical Center, which will not allow the animals inside the building.

"These are not aggressive animals, but they will turn defensive if they have to," McNally said. "People who are bitten have usually been interacting inappropriately with gila monsters.

"We are very interested in teaching appropriate behavior and respect for the animals," he said.

Gila monsters are protected by the state, McNally said, even though they are not an endangered species. It is illegal to capture and to keep the creatures because the gila monster and the Mexican beaded lizard are the only two poisonous lizards on the planet, he said.

Because gila monsters spend 97 percent of their lives underground in burrows, and because they will not attack unless provoked, there is not a large number of cases of gila monster bites in Arizona, McNally said.

"We don't get a lot of calls, but we'd like not to get any. Bites are not common because gila monsters are not seen daily," he said.

Gila monsters live in Arizona and portions of California, Utah and Mexico. McNally said Tucson is right in the middle of the range, which is why people living here hear a lot more about the creatures.

Gila monsters have beaded-looking skin and move slowly, McNally said. He said that people are often misled by the slow movements of the creature, so they might tease it, but in reality gila monsters can turn and bite quickly.

He said there are no documented fatalities from gila monster venom, nor any cases requiring overnight hospital stays in the past two years.

McNally said the number is low because it takes awhile for the venom to travel into a victim, and most people pull the animal off before that happens.

"Although very few people are hospitalized, everybody who is bitten needs to go to an emergency room because gila monsters have very brittle teeth. When someone pulls one off their arm, teeth often get embedded in the skin so a doctor needs to get those teeth out."

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