Being a history buff, I can't help but wonder how you all got your start in snakes, be it for pets, collecting, breeding, business, etc. What was your first snake? What was your beginning collection? When/what did you start breeding? How did you make it in business (this goes out more to people like Kara and Adam, lol)?

Personally, my first snake was a Ball Python. It was given to me as an adult, and then I started visiting local (within 100 miles) reptile shops online and in person to see what they had, and began collecting. I bought a Mexican Black Kingsnake, then a Burmese Python, then a Jungle Carpet Python, then another Ball Python... soon I was breeding my own rats to feed them. I soon wanted to breed snakes, but wondered if it was worth the time and money. Then I became aware of the Ball Python morphs (and their prices) and also remembered high school advanced biology classes that taught me about recessive and dominant genes... suddenly I was hooked. I bought up 1.2 Het Albinos but got burned on the 0.2 Hets (more like 2.0 normals) and the 1.0 Het died. Starting over was tough, but then I bought 2.2 Hets and 0.5 normals and a year later bought 1.0 Albino (looking back I should have bought more female hets) and this year will be my first year of production! The two things I can say are, love it, and invest correctly. In the beginning, buy a group of female hets (if you're breeding recessive morphs obviously) and have at least 2.0 morphs, then once you start earning money at it, make your own colony with hold-backs. Keeping and feeding a bunch of pythons when you haven't made money at it takes a lot from your normal income. Keep it small at first, then expand when it starts making you money. Snakes cost a lot of time and money to keep and breed.

So, what's your story?