Dang... it says my last visit over here was the 19th of October last year. It's hard to believe I haven't visited in almost a year.

Is everyone getting all these red x's instead of images? Or is it just me?

Anyhoo, we went to the Tucson Reptile show this weekend, which made me realize I've had Phil sitting here on my desk for two years now. He's prowling his enclosure, which means I probably need to go pick up rats for everybody.

Let's see... not sure what the last information I updated was, so I'll try and give the Reader's Digest version of what's going on.

I have the four ball pythons. Phil, for those who were around, was the first one I picked up at the Tucson show in 2003. Magellan joined the menagerie a short time later, followed by Dixie and finally a rescue that I got from a co-worker's niece who ended up dubbed "Nippy" after she bit my wife. In Nippy's case, I don't think it was aggression or malice; she is a VERY aggressive feeder and my wife had just put on some oil that had cedar in it. If Nippy's former owner had gotten mice that had been on cedar shavings, they would have carried a bit of that smell.

Nippy has NEVER let a rat reach the floor of her cage before she has it in her jaws and coils.

At last year's Tucson show, Pip joined the crew. Pip is the African House snake. Oddly enough, we went to this year's show and did not come home with either a new snake or a new bearded dragon.

My wife has three beardies; Kilroy is over two years old now and he's doing quite well, as are her other two beardies; both females.

Our purchase this year was a couple of leopard geckos for the living room terrarium, which has been vacant for many months now since the last of our anoles died of old age. The terrarium has been cleaned out and redone for the desert species, so I'll see if I can get a decent picture to post.

Anyway, that's the status in a nutshell. Amusingly, it seemed my wife found more ball pythons yesterday that she thought were great looking than I did. I think the only thing that might have tempted me to get another this year is if I'd found a female het albino for a reasonable price. Magellan had a couple of albino siblings, so he potentially carries the gene. All four are now about old enough to try breeding, so I'm going to do some research into that soon.

Hopefully I'll be around a bit more often than once a year!