Ask any Maine kid, and there’s a good chance they know Mr. Drew and His Animals, Too.
Mr. Drew has brought rescued exotic animals like pythons, skunks and tortoises to thousands of events at schools, libraries and home birthday parties. In just the past year, 50,000 people have visited Mr. Drew’s education center at Lewiston Mall, home to 400 rescued animals. There, as soon as Mr. Drew takes an African grey parrot named Simon out of its cage and begins to talk about him, a crowd forms. Everyone loves his blend of show-and-tell science, dad jokes and folksy life lessons.
But fewer people know the story of the man behind it all—Andrew Desjardins, 57—and his recovery.
“I didn’t go into sobriety thinking that my life was going to change,” he says. “But it did. None of this would have happened if I had kept drinking.”
The Desjardins family were seasonals at a campground when one rainy afternoon Andrew went home to fetch some of his rescued reptiles to entertain bored children. “I was talking about the animals and letting kids hold them, and one of the mothers asked if I would do a birthday party,” he says. “That’s where it all started. But I had to be on my best behavior, because you can’t go to a kid’s birthday party smelling like alcohol.”
In the early Mr. Drew days, he’d pick up beer as soon as the gig was over.
“One day my wife Susan came home and I was on the bed completely blacked out,” Andrew says. “One of our older kids said that I wouldn’t wake up. I’d only had a couple of drinks. But it was explained to me later that your tolerance only goes so high and then your body says, ‘No more, no more.’ I didn’t even have three, and I completely blacked out. And this happened a couple of times. Susan was angry, understandably, and wrote a long letter. Reading it, I realized how much my drinking was hurting her and hurting our family. That letter was the turning point. We both knew that something needed to change.”
Andrew got into an outpatient treatment program in Lewiston, where he thought about all he had to lose: his wife and family, both his career as a draftsman and his Mr. Drew gig, his driver’s license, his freedom, and his health. “I kept rereading the letter and thinking about it—and thinking about my grandfather, who was an alcoholic and what that did in his life,” he says. “I knew that I needed to prioritize myself, my sobriety and—by extension—my family.”
Andrew got sober in 2007.
Meanwhile, the Desjardins continued to take in exotic pets that the Maine Warden Service and humane societies aren’t equipped to take. By 2017, however, they didn’t have the space for more animals at their home. “Here I am talking to kids about responsibility,” Andrew says, “and there’s a fine line between rescue and hoarding. We had to stop.”
Who would take those animals, he didn’t know.
Susan, thankfully, found a solution—a 1,700-square-foot space available at a former mill. There the Desjardins opened an education center where they could take in more animals and charge admission. Mr. Drew’s menagerie continued to grow, until the organization became a nonprofit in 2024 and moved to a 10,000 square-foot-space in the Lewiston Mall. Today, Mr. Drew and his crew—20 paid employees and many volunteers—care for 400 rescued animals: reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, birds and a whole lot of fish.
“I’m doing what I enjoy,” Andrew says. “And for me to do this, first I had to be sober. I sleep at night knowing I did the best I could. I made some people smile. And I taught some invaluable lessons to children—and adults—anything from ecology to taking life one day at a time.”
Andrew’s office, which he shares with an iguana named Zigzag, is in the display window of the education center. Andrew signs “thank you” as children walk by and point at the strip mall window, their mouths making the shape for the words “Mr. Drew.” For them, going to the education center and seeing Mr. Drew himself is a bit like visiting Santa’s village and seeing Old St. Nick.
For Andrew, being on display is practical—if someone has a question, they know where to find him—but also connected to his sobriety.
“I’m not hiding,” he says.
Talking about his recovery is something he does often.
“I tell people, just because you haven’t succeeded yet doesn’t mean you’ve failed,” he says. “And there’s no right way to do it. For me, it helped that I could focus on this. I see the positive reactions of the children and the parents and I can feed off their energy.”