So I'm curious, what's your BP story?

How did you guys end up getting your first snake? What was it like? How did other people react? Etc. I am very curious :D

For me, I've always liked snakes and thought they were very intriguing, but would have never thought that I would personally get one. But one night in college I went to a house party, one of the people living in that house had a BP. He took it out and let some of his friends hold it, I remember being very scared because I thought the loud music was going to agitate the BP into biting me or something, but once it was in my hand, it just kind of "sniffed" at me for a little bit and it was very calm. I fell in love right then and there, I knew I was going to get one sooner or later. So last year in June, once I finally moved out on my own, the first investment I made was to get a BP. Of course the people around me weren't as excited, but it was awesome to finally have a little BP girl of my own. To see how much she's grown from when she was a hatchling until now is crazy, she used to be able to fit on one palm of my hand, and now she has to wrap herself around my arm because she is too big for both of my hands together. *tear* :)

What's your BP story?

well, i always loved to catch snakes since i was like 7, and when i was i think 10 or 12 or somewhere around there, my dad bought me a baby snow corn snake, and i loved it, sadly i was living at my moms house and it was over-fed, so next time i came over i found a dead snake where i left a live one:(:mad:. my first BP (my second snake), came around when i was like 14. i was in california staying at my uncles house and his neighbor owned a pet store, so my uncle said he would buy me one. so we went over there and i picked one out for the guy to put on hold till when we left, when we went back to get it the guy said that he was moving it and it slipped out of his hand and down a drain in the bathroom floor:(, so he let me pick another one and gave my uncle 1/2 off, and i still have him today:D (now im 20)
heres a pic
http://i972.photobucket.com/albums/a...0929111452.jpg

I've always liked snakes I grew up in the country here in oregon and would always run around catching garter snakes and racers, along with frogs and lizards. I remember I caught a garter snake once and feed it a small frog and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. Well I didn't really know about ball pythons or boas or any of that cuz I grew up in the country When I went to college I got a job at a pet store my second year they had bearded dragons and geckos there but no snakes. So I did some reach and decided I really wanted a snake I got a corn snake. It was cool and everything but I wanted some thing a little more exotic, so I looked on CL and found a male bp that came with a tank for $50. I picked it up and now 2 years later I have 6 bps my corn and I just picked up my first boa

My oldest sister had an adult male BP. I had already owned a couple snakes before handling hers, but that was the first Ball I've ever handled. I fell in love with how they aren't on-the-go like my Colubrids were. Three years ago I kept admiring this female Ball at Petsmart in a three-week time period. A few times after handling her during that time my mom said, "Okay, let's get her."

As of today she will always be my favorite snake. I love her to death and if it came down to it she'd be the only snake I'd keep out of all my others.:)

http://i609.photobucket.com/albums/t...hhsheyawns.jpg

My story is long but here it is:

Growing up I was afraid of getting bitten by a snake, so I never had one as a pet and never held one. My brother used to catch garter snakes all the time and I thought they were cool, but they weren't very friendly. :rolleyes:

When I went to college I lived in an apartment that had a no pet policy. I tried to find a pet I thought they would agree to let me have and I came across ball pythons. I started doing a lot of research, but in the end I was told no by my landlord. I finished college in May of last year and moved to Wisconsin for work in August. I had pretty much given up/forgotten about my desire to have a ball python by this time, but I did get a dog in September after moving. Well I had an empty 29 gallon fish tank and I was thinking about what I could put in. I ruled out fish because they really aren't that cool as pets, but they make pretty decorations. I decided I was going to get the ball python I wanted (too bad I never researched about buying from pet stores >__<).

In October of last year I went into the pet store that's super close to my house for dog food and wandered into the reptile section of the store. Being a horrible person who sub comes to impulse buys I left with a ball python (and my dog food). Given that I had forgotten a lot of what I researched by this point, not to mention a lot of it was extremely outdated to begin with, my setup was horrible. I also listened to the pet store and believed that she only need one mouse a week. She was probably 500-600g then. By January I could noticeably see that I wasn't taking even remotely good care of her, and she let me know with a bite to the hand, so I re-read all of the books I bought and re-did my research online. I drastically improved her setup (bye bye light, hello UTH), and started feeding her more.

Around this time I decided that I want another since she need a bigger cage. In February I found what has now become my favorite reptile store, Reptile Rapture, and I purchased a new setup for my first one and my first morph, a tiny male spider ball python. I also decided that I should bring my snakes to the vet, because I thought it was something that was commonly done. I got some horrible advice from my vet (see my first post), and I wanted to double check. That was when I found SnakebytesTV and Brian mentioned BP.net so I had to check it out.

I am happy to say that my collection has exploded in size and my ball pythons are now in racks and receive excellent care. My first ball python got back to excellent health in no time and is now a monster at over 1800g. I plan on trying to breed her to my enchi this winter. :D

My first BP Lily (taken last month):
http://i1139.photobucket.com/albums/...1/IMG_1377.jpg

My story starts waaay back. My mom used to tell me about the snakes she pet-sat for a teacher over one summer when she was a kid, who gave her a hognose as a gift afterwards. She always talked about how great a pet it was, how much fun she had taking care of it, etc etc. We had all sorts of pets growing up, but I never had a snake of my own (probably had something to do with the nosy dog, mischievous cats, and two younger siblings who liked to get into everything, lol).

Then in my first year of college I ended up rooming with a long-time friend of mine, and she got a baby ball python. He was the sweetest thing, and I loved helping take care of him and playing with him. A couple years later I befriended a girl who had a collection of snakes (and other herps), mostly red tail boas. I loved playing with them too, but I still had a major soft spot for the ball python personality and temperament.

Sooo I finally caved, and at an animal expo last month, I got my baby, Sekhmet. I purposely got her for her major attitude and unusual pattern. She's already calmed down a lot though,she didn't strike at me at all today, lol.
http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/w...kh10022011.jpg

I recently had a encounter with Rattle snakes while @ work cleaning,I looked down and bam he was around my foot chilling. I panic of course,it curled up and no shaking it rattle nothing till another employee pops up. Ten minutes later i'm up at the front desk dealing with other employee's when i felt itchy and brushed my leg when a baby snake slithered out,By that time i was ready to go home and be done with animals period for the day,Told my husband everything that went on when he thought getting my a snake was what i needed.
So today we went to the Reptile Expo and i got talked into a "Normal Bp"...
That's how i ended up with Keegan lol

I've always loved snakes and was forever coming home with a garter snake or a little brown snake or something. I had a variety of lizards, snakes, and turtles when I was a kid. My dad hated snakes though and I was only ever allowed to keep one small garter snake I managed to wrangle into the house. Ironically, snakes were my favorite reptile - I loved how they moved, how they felt in my hands, how much personality they had. And they were the one reptile I was more limited to because of how my dad felt. But my dad always tried to support my interest no matter what and I did have some other interests (I was head-over-heals for horses too). And he did let me keep that little garter which was an awesome pet.

Only about 1 1/2 years ago, I reawakened my passion for reptiles and decided I wanted to build a nice display terrarium. My hubby (another animal lover) readily agreed and I chose a BP to put in it. I adopted Ella from a Reptile Rescue. Obviously, we all know that BPs aren't the best display snake which I learned pretty quickly, but I loved having the more exotic type snake like a python and I loved how docile Ella was so even though her tank wasn't the pretty natural display I was hoping for, it meant I could keep trying with other species, lol!

We loved having Ella so much that one thing led to another and now we have a baby boa and I have plans to breed Peaches one day. And that means I'll be in the market for a male boa in the near future too. I love how snakes are like potato chips - can't have just one! :D

Incidentally, I named our boa "Peaches" after my dad. Peaches was his nickname for me when I was a kid and even though he didn't like snakes, as I said, he always supported my interests - even now. He didn't think much when I announced our adoption of Ella but he still never put me down about it and even though I'm 35 now and grown and married, he still supports me in everything I do. So Peaches was named in honor of my dad. ;)

This was back in November 2010. I actually never thought of owning any reptiles before. I was just browsing around the pet shop at the mall like I always do and happened to stop and stared at their ball pythons. A guy came over and was like, "they're pretty huh? I have one at home." I was like, yea, they're gorgeous but I'm scared of snakes. He and I started talking about his ball python that it never bit him or any of his kids. Easy to take care of, and only feed it once a week. I suddenly had the urge to buy one. But the pet shop sold them for $80/ball python so I checked out other pet shops. Petsmart had a sale for $40/ball python! I immediately drove to Petsmart and bought one on the same day. Best impulse buying ever!!! lol. I know, I know, don't buy animal from Petco or Petsmart, but hey!! I was new at this. Now I own 11 ball pythons (1.0 BEL, 1.0 Ivory, 0.1 Yellow Belly, 1.0 Spider, 0.1 Normal, 1.1 Albino, 1.1 Mojave, 0.1 Butter, and 0.1 Super Black Pastel on her way)! >_< I also got into other reptiles: 1 Tortoise, 1 Hog Nose, and 1 Green Tree Python.

Now my friends called me crazy snake guy. LOL

I've always been interested in exotics in general, but my passion for reptiles didn't get really sparked until I met a friend in high school who kept a pair of wild types. As a kid I used to run around in the marsh and get buckets of garters, so when I handled a BP for the first time I really enjoyed how they weren't as "wiggley" as garters (colubrids in general for that matter). I wasn't allowed to have pets in cages at the time, so I started going online and reading everything I could. Once I got into morphs and genetics I started reading about all reptiles I could, but I had a soft spot for BPs.

As soon as I moved out after graduation I started looking around at breeders and available animals, still wasn't allowed to have them at the house I lived in but I was fortunate enough to have a friend who would let me keep the snakes at his house. Along comes summer of 2010 and I picked up a female pastel and male mojave (wish I'd gotten two females now, but it doesn't much matter, I love both of my snakes to death :D ). Very soon now I'll be getting a fire female to add to the collection, and I couldn't be more excited! Also moved about six months ago and I can actually have my snakes with me :oops:

Pics!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...IMG_2404-1.jpg

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