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

I've started keeping my own pets since a LONG time ago... IDK how old I was... maybe 6 or 7 when I got my first hamster?
Anyway, before that I had always LOVED catching newts, frogs and garter snakes(The most my sister and I caught in one day was 8 and we played with them all day before letting them go. I fondly remember my favourite one, a tiny little guy with a checker pattern we named Checkers.)
We moved from that location to here, where there are still lots of garters, newts, frogs, and alligator lizards. Well, I wanted a reptile as an actual pet I could keep and looked into three: Bearded dragon, Crested Gecko, and Leopard gecko. Mom told me NO REPTILES IN THIS HOUSE.(Just so you know, we now have 5 in this same house. XD)
But I ended up going with the crested gecko and I still have him, 5 years later.
Just last year on 8/9/10, I got my first bearded dragon after I had saved a lot of money up...for a dog. XD I didn't get a dog, I got a lizard instead. BEST decision ever. Beardies make the best pets in the world. On 1/1/11 I rescued my second bearded dragon from a bad petstore. On 1/22/11 my younger sister got a crested gecko baby from an expo.

Well, It was only this late May/ early June I started looking at snakes. I looked at Cornsnakes first and at a reptile rally thing at Petco I was talking to a boy about his cornsnake he brought and I pet it an stuff and thought they were awesome. It was my first time there I pet a ball python also. All of them were curled contently around their owner's wrists and all of them were pretty small too. Well, I thought they were cool, but went to talk and hang out more with the people who brought their beardies.
I did research on the corn snakes and was looking up good pet snakes and I kept seeing Ball Pythons. I thought they got a LOT bigger than 5 feet, so I didn't even think about them. (I was thinking of Burms. Whoops) But I ended up looking up more about them and I did a research paper on them and the more I saw of them the more I fell in love with them.
Though I remember mom said 'No snakes. Lizards are fine, no snakes'. And I replied 'That's fine, I don't think I'd ever want a snake'. "
Well, I ended up writing a persuasiveness paper to my dad(after Mom grew to not mind the idea of letting me get a snake) and he eventually said I could, the day before the reptile expo. XD I wasn't planning on getting one there, I planned on getting one from the expo January 2012. I got one August 13th. A Beautiful little normal girl I named Kallista. :3 As I speak she's sitting on my lap.
She's such a sweetie. Under 3 months, 6 oz, and 22-24" right now. Still small though really. I hope she grows to be 5 feet. XD

But yeah, and I do not think this will be the last snake either.

And I only mentioned all the reptiles we have(5 of them) I didn't mention the other pets and I won't since I'm here to talk about reptiles.
We've got 7 more pets though(All mammals)

But yeah, a while ago I never even would have thought of owning a pet python and feeding it live mice. O.o

i've always been an animal lover since i was young. growing up in a village surrounded by green lushes has exposed me to all kinds of creatures (i live in tropical asia).

catching bugs, collecting gecko eggs (they eventually hatch!), keeping tadpoles and such was my favorite pass time as a kid. it was the best thing ever! i was like mowgli back then, animals were my friends :D

reptiles, especially snakes fascinates me the most. we have giant monitors and snakes lurking around, its rare but when they appear ill go crazy and ill try to get closer to inspect them, but they flee away most of the time.

but snakes are taboo in my family and society. my protective grandpa would chop off any snake he encounters, as alot of snake species here are venomous :(

that has even fueled me more to keep snakes, despite what other people think/say bout them. it has always been my dream and i'm a python fan. now i'm working and living on my own, i finally get to keep my own bp! and i love her to bits! thanks for reading.

Ever since I was little I was always out searching for any kind of animal I could fine, which in the area I was in, it was mainly toads and wolf spiders that appealed to me. When I was 8 I caught an adult Bull Frog and set it free a short time afterwards. My very first snake was a Rough Green Snake I found in a tree stump. It was the most amazing animal I had ever seen to that point mainly because I had never owned a snake before and they are rare to see in a neighborhood full of kids.

Skip ahead to when I was 13 which was 1998, my parents got a call from a traveling Baseball team in Texas that had seen me play. So i went down there fro the summer and my dad knew the coach quite well and I stayed with him for part of the summer. During this time I dreamed of getting a snake again, it was on my mind all the time even during the games I was in. So one day I called my parents and told them I wanted to get a python and they called our local pet store which I don't even understand how they are still open, it is the nastiest place I have ever been in and it smells like it has never been cleaned. Anyways, after I get home we went straight to the pet store and picked up my first ball python. He was a male and I was in awe about this snake.

A couple of years later i start to build that collection with a het Albino pair I got for my birthday, I had quite a collection built up by the time 2006 came around and I had just turned 21. I decided that I didn't want to be in construction any longer and enlisted in the Marine Corps for 4 years. Although I hated selling off all of my Ball Pythons and venomous stuff. After what seemed like the fastest 4 years of my life, I got out in January of this year and started building up my collection once again. I got leave until my contract was out and got several big paychecks from the government that was owed and decided to buy some Ball Pythons with it. First ones I bought was an Albino male and 1.1 Mojaves, then after that I had a new BP coming every week for a few weeks. I had a big pause in buying due to work being so far away and gas prices every week. But things are starting to look up in that sense. Well that is my story. :salute:

I grew up as a tom boy. I liked being a rough and tumble kid, I didn't mind getting dirty and I loved all animals.

One summer, my parents enrolled me in a summer camp at our local Nature Science Center. I still remember Helen the Hognose. She was my favorite snake ever. One day I came and they said that the Kingsnake had escaped, and that Helen was missing, and they thought the Kingsnake got into her enclosure and ate her. :tears:

I also remember, and my mother still has the newspaper clipping with the picture, us weighing and measuring the Science Center's Burmese python. I think he was over 200 lbs at the time - and there's just a row of kids standing on scales with a section of the snake in our arms. Of course, there were adults at the head, tail and midway to make sure we weren't hurt.

So, Karl has this 20 gallon aquarium that we kept fish in for some time. When the fish died, we didn't replace them, and once the last one died of old age, he decided he wanted to put a lizard in there, and set it up very naturalistic.

He didn't research though, and came home with this "awesome green lizard" that our local pet store sold to him "for only $20!!!". Yeah, it was a sick baby iguana. Zues didn't live very long, unfortunately - or maybe fortunately, because it opened the door to getting my first ball python.

Once Zues died, I didn't want Karl rushing out to replace him with another green lizard that he had not researched. So I asked him if he minded if I researched ball pythons and got one of those instead. He agreed, and the rest - as they say - is history!

My mother swears to this day "I should have never sent you to the Nature Science Center - then maybe you wouldn't have all these snakes!"

I'm a huge animal lover...always have been. My family would have NEVER let me get a snake when I lived there, and when I was married my ex was completely against it. After being divorced since 2009 I realized the very beginning of this year that I could finally get my own snake since it's just my son and I. I was at a pet expo that my mom was volunteering with her boxer rescue for, and I took my son and my little 7 y/o sister to look at the other vendors and we saw a reptile store there with a HUGE bermese python. My son ran up and asked to pet it without hesitation. I went for the ball pythons, and fell in love with a large male. I went to that store 2 weeks later to pick up my little Julius :love:
http://i52.tinypic.com/2nqyuck.jpg
Now I have 8 ball python (two more on their way) and a boa lol. AND a T! Never saw this coming I must say lol. People think I'm crazy, but I don't care. My boyfriend totally accepts it and my son adores them all, so that's all I care about.

i regret saying my very first BP when i was 19 was an impulse buy & unfortunately due to my lack of knowledge, it met an early demise. that experience traumatized me to where i refused to own another until i was able to do all the research i needed to before hand. so i stuck with the other creature-babies for some time. well, come last year i decided i wanted another bp & did all the research on it, contacted numerous breeders, owners & stores to gather all that knowledge & info. finally bumped into frankie's website - fatboysballpythons.com. after numerous phone conversations & time spent picking his brains (which he was more then willing to oblige & took the time to answer my questions as thoroughly as he possibly could) i decided that i was gonna buy from him also liking the fact that he's located closer to me. i let my better half know what i was up to & although he grumbled a little he knew my plan was already set in motion & i wasnt gonna take no from him. i spent some time gathering supplies for the snake & made a couple payments on it in the process to where december came around & frankie & i set up a date for us to xcome & pick my BP up. me & my better half & our kids drove out to frankie's on the 6th & i handed him the rest of what was owed for her. he led me to his snake room & pulled her out of her tub & set her into my hands. she was all balled up & while i held her for a little bit frankie showed me one of her siblings who was a BEL. he even showed me their momma, another gorgeous mojo. he let me peek at one of his pieds too, it was a really cool experience & although it was time to get back on the road i found myself not wanting to go. i was in a room with a whole bunch of creatures & was dying to see 'em all, lol but it was getting late so i had to wrench myself away. frankie & his wife boxed up my girl for me & we drove home with her. funny story about that, i heard some scritchin' & scratchin' in the box & just figured "eh she's moving around in there in the little bag she's in."
well come to find out, upon unboxing her that she'd escaped the cloth bag & had worked herself up between the layers of styrafoam & paper so that as mike was opening the box & pulled up the top layer of wrinkled paper there she was S'd & coiled, staring up at us. i was very nervous as i reached to try to pick her up out of the box fearing she'd strike at me. i got her in her cage without incident though & although i was happy to finally have her home the 1st week here was loaded with stress for both of us cuz the temps & humidity in her cage went all crazy & unstable & i fought like hell to keep a constant 90 warm/80 cool temp range with 65% humidity but finally had to stop stressing & settled for some good ranges for the temps & switched from an all mulch blend substrate to 1/2 mulch, 1/2 paper & then finally to the current all bark. & now, after 10 months we've settled into a nice routine & i'm looking into planning for her adult set up soon. my 10 yr old & 7 yr old really enjoy handling her with me & i've introduced our youngest baby to her as well so the baby can be brought up early on with the snake. at 6 months old though she thinks the snake's cool body is something to try to taste & she's still got a vice-like grasp so i have to just hold the snake for her to look at & she does. she really concentrates too like she's trying to figure it out. :P
hope to be able to get more pics of her soon.

When I was around 10 my mom had a good friend that lived down the road from us, he had a Ball Python. God this was like late 80s early 90s. But, I always thought it was cool to look at. Mom hated snakes.

when I was a little kid like 5 or 6 I would always catch Anoles here in houston and keep them as pets. They never lived long cause mom and I didn't know how to care for them. I would just catch them, put them in a round gold fish bowl, and put sticks and leaves in it.

I didn't get my first BP when I was 29. I was board off work, and looking at petsmart and petco. I wanted a pet that was easy to care for, a lizard or a tranchula or scorpian and just pricing things. I was also looking at snakes too. I didn't really like the corns or king snakes that I seen, just way too small for my liking, I looked at BPs and Red Tails. I didn't have the money then to buy anything, but was just pricing to see what I needed. Then income tax time came and I got a huge refund this year...

most people buy a new car, pay off bills maybe, put towards a vaction, down payment on a house or maybe new furniture. No I bought my first BP and tattoo.
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j2..._7889684_o.jpg
Though I didn't know much accept for what the petsmart worker told me, who was wounderful on a lot of correct advise because she was actually an owner and breeder. but I have to admit I couldn't wait for my baby girl to get big.

however about a month later I wanted another snake, and was considering a red tail. I had seen a lot of them going for around $40 and $50, and I went to go check out Rain Forrest Pets in League City, TX. they had a full grown 12 foot female with complete set up for $250 but I only had $120 to spend, so I was going to get a baby red, then I looked and sitten in a cage all by it's self was a lonely sub adult female for $70... I picked her up and I was in love with this snake. She is my theropy, massuse, and sanity keeper. My baby always trys to bite me (even though her set is dead on).
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j2..._1145583_n.jpg

my last one is a rescued. I was on herpcenter.com, and this guy posted that he found a python on his back porch, just wasn't sure what kind and wanted to make sure he it wasn't a danger to his cats. It was in a flowerpot. the guy was in my area, to my surprise but I told him to ask closest surrounding naighbers and if he couldn't find the owner I would be more then happy to take him... Needless to say he couldn't and now I am the proud owner of three
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j2...822_072043.jpg

Though I eventuelly want to get a bigger snake, such as a Red Tail, or even a Burmese, Ball Pythons will always be my faverite snakes in the world

Went into a reptile store about 2 months ago with my fiance to poke around to kill some time.
I help a B.P. for just a few minutes and thought , cool!.
I then went home and got hooked on B.P. net , researching and looking at thousands of morphs.
I went to 2 reptile shows in the Pittsburgh area, while putting a tank together. I bought a nice albino male for $250 at the second one.
My fiance, and 5 year daughter and I are all enjoying!!
Todd

I started out with a common garter snake and fell in love with snakes after that. I had my garter snake back in 2005 and then I came across ball pythons and got my first one in October of 2008. I have been keeping ball pythons since then. I am very seriously addicted and plan on getting more snakes in the future.

I needed a hobby of some sort and had always been interested in animals growing up, mostly of a four-legged sort. I originally planned/wanted to be a vet but lacked the grasp of science I'd need to accomplish that. I wanted something that was low-key and easy to maintain but still interesting, which led me to buying a corn snake, which I promptly named "Old Gregg" or if you ask my wife, "Jimmy John" because like all colubrids, he's "...freaky fast!", at least according to her, lol!

A little less than a year after I bought my corn, I found this site and "discovered" ball pythons. I read anything and everything I could about them and ended up buying an albino male/het albino female pair with the intention of possibly breeding them at some point. I recently added four more ball pythons and hope to get either a diamond coastal carpet or a red tail boa at some point in the future. Or maybe a blood python. Or maybe...hahahahaha! Can't stop at just one! :D