The one that started it all.

[VigdisXX]

I thought id start something a little interesting: what was it that had you fall in love with bps or snakes in general? Was it a pic? A person? Or an individual animal?
Id love to hear your stories!
For me, i was wanting a corn snake at first, and upon researching, someone suggested a ball python. The first time i looked at pics i fell in love! Their adorable faces! The first time i held a baby i had to have one of my own, and a month or so later i had my girl Aradia.


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[CptJack]

My teenaged son wanted a BP. We agreed to pay for half if he paid for the rest with his own money. He kept his end of the deal, we kept ours.

I literally grumbled and groused saying that I didn't mind but I didn't see any POINT in having a snake as a pet since they didn't really DO anything. Not afraid, just.. 'Meh' about it. Then we picked up the snake and I fell HARD. He was just so calm, docile and utterly undemanding and *relaxing* that I got hooked.

So I bought my own snake.

And then a couple of more ;-)

[Gerardo]

For me ive always been attracted to snakes. Ever since i can remember ive wanted to be around snakes. So there was never anything that actually specific that made me want a snake. I was born a snake lover. Shout out to anybody born the year of the snake.

[kc261]

Oh this should be a fun thread! Thanks for posting!

I've pretty much always loved all animals for as long as I can remember. As a part of that, I would occasionally catch snakes when I was a kid. Some of them I kept for 5 minutes, some for longer, but I never really had a pet snake. Just about every other kind of pet, though!

In college, I volunteered for the nearby zoo. One of the things we were allowed to do was take out certain "contact animals" for the public to see up close, and even touch. These contact animals included a few ball pythons. I really loved taking them out because they were small enough and slow moving enough they were very easy to handle while walking around and giving a big percentage of my attention to the people I was talking to, and also these same factors helped me to convince timid people that the snake really was ok and it wouldn't hurt them if they touched its tail. During that period, I told myself I'd get one as a pet eventually.

Eventually took rather longer than expected, and I'd pretty much forgotten the idea. Then one day my husband and I were furniture shopping with 2 girls in tow who were understandably bored with the process. We were at a strip mall that had 2 furniture stores in it. As we walked from one to the other, we passed a pet store. We decided to go in and look around, just to give the kids something that interested them more. Pretty soon, we were holding a ball python, and both girls and my husband were quite enchanted with it...until my husband saw a mite crawling on his arm which made us give the snake back and leave that store in a hurry. But the idea had been revitalized in my mind and planted in theirs. Within about a month, after lots of research, we had picked up our first normal bp girl. About 6 months later, we got a corn, also. And within about a year, we'd decided we wanted to try breeding, and bought a male of each species. Over the years we've acquired quite a few snakes, but life got in the way of our original breeding plans. Finally, just a week ago, 7 years after we got the first BP, we hatched out our first clutch...corns. SO HAPPY!

[alan12013]

I remember getting reptile magazines as a kid and they would have a picture of an albino ball python hanging from a tree or something to make it look exotic. I thought that they looked awesome with the shape of the head and how unlike a lot of snakes there was a defined mouth, head, neck, body and tail. In my mind I thought that was where it was at. Having a ton of snakes that were all special in their own rights. I wish I could remember what magazines I was looking at but the image of an albino ball python will forever be burned in my brain. I used to collect garter snakes from under boards in the field next to my house and some of them would make your jaw drop today even. Back then I think the only ball python morph was really the albino (early 90's so not sure) and no one was into garter snakes. I would find albinos, ones with thick blue lines down their back, some with red lines, yellow lines, checkered black and grey with various colored stripes, some were noticeably larger than they should have been. Looking back I wonder how that much variety happened in the wild, mind blowing. I recently discovered that I do like snakes and am in a position now to do what I wanted to do as a kid which is breed and take care of these "super exotic" creatures. I would look in those magazines at all of the breeding equipment and bins and wanted to have all of that stuff so bad. I'm determined now to get into snake breeding and I have some solid ideas that I think will work out great.

[VW_SnakeKeeper]

For me, I've always been entrannced by snakes. When i was a kid, around four or five, my grandfather would take me to a ghost town tourist attraction, somewhere in the south west, that had a rattlesnake exibit. I would spend hours there just looking at their specimens. We would go so often, that they let us watch them vaccinating the snakes, during which the keeper was bit. As scary as it was to witness I knew one day I would have my own snake. Fast foreward 18 ish years an hear I am with my first ball python, with plans to aquire more.

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[FancypantsFrost]

For me the love of reptiles was huge from the get go! I mean huge, I think it really started with my fascination with dinosaurs as early as I could remember. I remember half of my wardrobe being covered in dinosaurs, all of my books were dinosaurs and I had a triassic toybox. It didnt take long before I evolved from dinosaurs to modern day reptiles, there was a lot of overlap and I still love dinosaurs today but not with the same preoccupying fascination i have with modern reptiles. I think what really drew me in was the fact I'd spend all day watching animal planet and national geographic, I think I caught every single walking with dinosaurs special or anything of the sort, and steve irwin was my hero. I didn't watch many cartoons but by god I loved me some animal planet. I think my first contact with reptiles might have been seeing a big ol albino retic at a zoo or museum or something, I don't recall because I was probably 4 or 5 but I have a picture of it draped across my neck with a huge s--t eating grin on my face. When I was probably 7 or 8 I started roaming around the forests and creeks in my neighborhood in ohio searching around for any wildlife. I would mostly find garter snakes and catch them with a good friend, but occasionally a tricky little skink or a few newts. Once in a while I'd find something more exciting, I'm certain that one time when I was probably 9 I caught a venomous cottonmouth or copperhead (i forget which and I dont feel like identifying it now). In this time I owned a fair share of cold blooded friends. I remember having an anole, emerald swift, tree frogs, fire belly newts and toads, an iguana, some kind of awesome big fat brown frog, and a savannah moniter. When I was in middle school I finally got my first ball python, a pastel male I named sonny (like sunny because of his yellow) and I got a second one for my birthday maybe a year later, a normal from my sisters friend who was breeding. I absolutely loved these guys but I was kind of young and dumb, I kept them alive for two years or so and I know they were never underweight, no scale rot mouth rot belly burns or anything noticable to the novice snake owner (with common sense that is....ive seen people oblivious to very obvious things on here, I wasn't ignorant just inexperienced haha). Unfortunately I don't have either of those guys today, I'm really not sure what caused them to die.....mites is one problem I could have ran into i suppose, I didn't know anything about mites at the time but I've never had a problem with mites in my current collection so I can't reflect back and compare to anything. Anyway in the last few years I decided I had to have ball pythons back in my life. It started out buying one pair, a female spider and a male pastel because of course bumblebees are in my opinion one of the most striking beautiful starter morphs, and with the mind blowing array of morphs i was seeing online I thought maybe someday I could breed them. Well the more I researched and attended shows like NARBC (amazing) the further and further I got sucked into the life. I think you guys all know where the story goes from here... Now I have 11 ball pythons I'm keeping and I'll be doing my first pairings this year, very exciting!

[kylearmbar]

When I was a little kid, we were at a quarry and I caught a garter snake and it bit me. I was so curious to why it bit me, and that started my love for reptiles.

[BPavery]

I think Steve Irwin and Jeff Corwin sparked my passion for animals. I was also around a lot of wild snakes at a young age and my mom took me to a reptile show. I first saw a BP years ago, and loved them. After getting some experience in reptile keeping with my Leopard Gecko, Gator, I decided to purchase my first Ball Python in 2012.


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[BPavery]

When I was a little kid, we were at a quarry and I caught a garter snake and it bit me. I was so curious to why it bit me, and that started my love for reptiles.

I'm glad it started your love for reptiles and not hate for them.


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