How/why did you get into the reptile hobby?

I had always been interested in snakes. The first time I saw someone get shooken up over seeing one, I knew I'd like them. Our local mom and pop pet store had a huge albino Burmese and I thought it was awesome! I asked my mom for a couple years and saved up a bunch of money to pay for anything I needed and she always said no.
Well, one day her boyfriend(now husband) was around and I asked her again in a somewhat joking manner figuring I already knew the answer. Sure enough, she said no. then the surprise came! He asked what kind I wanted and I said a corn snake and he said they're cute and not too bad, my mom flipped out and was asking him why he'd say that. He replied with stories of his 12burm and two rtb's he used to have.
That week we got Geoff, my corn snake, who turned out to not be a boy.
That was last May. That October (on Halloween!) I got a ball python from my bio teacher who didn't really want it anymore. For Christmas I got a pueblan milk, then in February I went with my stepdad to get some mice and came home with a gtp. My mom almost lost it. Then five days later they were shopping and my mom got an expensive purse. Well, is forgotten to get fresh bedding so I asked them to pick some up in their way home, and they came home with another gtp. So, 5 snakes in a year, I'm not complaining :)

I started out with keeping a garter snake. I then discovered ball pythons back in 2008 and I have been addicted to them ever since. Now I want every reptile that you can possibly imagine. I plan on getting a red tail boa and a blue tonngue skink when I eventually get a house and have more room.

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Originally Posted by ballpythonluvr

when I eventually get a house and have more room.

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Itll be dangerous when i get my first house. I will go nut and probably dedicate half the house to just keeping herps lol!

Isimply didn't care for dogs or cats growing up, I play with them but they just were not my main interest. I started cuaghting and handlingsnakes by the tiem I was 12 and it grew from there , Out of my entire family I am the only oen that not scared of any reptile and I finally started to infect my niece, and my mothe with the joys of it now lol.
Plus I met my fiancee on here and she a snake( animal in general ) lover ..

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Originally Posted by rlditmars

I remember my Dad caught a baby Massasuaga rattler

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My dad is a state park ranger up here and he worked at a park that had a problem with rattle snakes. He terrified of them so he asked me (14 at the time) if I would be up to helping him. I was all over it so I became the snake wrangler at the park. It was awesome. The type of rattlesnake that we have up here are only about 3.5 feet at best but they tend to have the shoot first ask questions later mentality! But thankfully I have never been bitten!

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Originally Posted by Mike41793

Itll be dangerous when i get my first house. I will go nut and probably dedicate half the house to just keeping herps lol!

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I feel ya I turned our guest bedroom into a reptile room and needless to say with only 13 snakes I still have a lot of room so I am getting ETS and its killing me cuz I cant afford any new snakes at the moment. We are currently looking to buy a house with a big basement so I can really open up the collection!

Well growing up i will say i was fortunate enough to experience a diverse first hand knowledge on a lot of animals due to my mom. from your common domestic cats and dogs, to farm animals like pig, chickens, pigs, etc, to more exotic and aquatic ones. we had some crazy stuff in our house growing up and was unofficially dubbed the Zoo of Upper Darby. you could hear the animals 1-2 blocks away. LOL. after i left for the airforce and returned, it was about 2-3 yeaars after that that i got my first BP, Rafael. and landed a job in the Pet store i grew up near. wiggled my way into the reptile room after a week or 2 there and loved it, while there i got some real fun dealing with many more diverse reptiles and exotics. including hots, aliigators/camien. and trantula's and many other things. While there they had a pair of australian brown water pythons, that no one ever looked at, or did much with, because of their protective nature. so i took a chance and took them out, and fell in total love with them. and was totally hooked on snakes from that point on. although i always preferred reptiles over fur and feathers.

As a kid I always loved catching animals, didn't really matter if it was a snake, frog, newt, insect, or (if I was lucky) birds/mammals. My parents were never very excited at the thought of non-dog or non-cat pets, so other than a venture with some green anoles when I was very young (disastrous) I was limited to betta fish when it came to actual pets. The rest was simple catch and release.

Fast forward to high school and I just stumbled across a corn snake breeder's website one day. I spent a good 6 hours looking at all the crazy colored snakes, and then googling for as much information as possible and more breeder's websites. After about a week I knew I'd found what I knew I'd love doing for the rest of my life. Easy to care for, fascinating, and so many different combos! Ball pythons didn't interest me at all though until I met a woman who kept a pair and let me handle them for a while. LOVED that they weren't so squirmy and the manageable size while still being pretty heavily bodied. I spent forever trying to convince my mother to let me just get one, but it was absolutely not happening.

So I spent the better part of four years just reading/researching, and it also gave me a much better idea on how the business/breeding side of the hobby worked before I just dove into it. Looking back it's probably a good thing. It wasn't until I'd moved out of my mother's house to my dad's place for free college housing that I started saving some money and looking at breeder's websites for snakes I would want to get. My dad's wife is TERRIFIED of snakes, so I knew I couldn't keep them there, but my boyfriend at the time didn't mind giving me some shelf space at his house. So after a few months debating whether or not I was comfortable having pets in a house other than mine I just jumped and got myself the mojave male I'd been admiring for weeks. Mojaves were (and are) my all time favorite BP morph, and rather than getting a normal female I decided I'd just get the nicest female pastel I could afford to go with him.

Come August 2010, I got Monty and Ember :D and it's just been growing ever since. I now live in my own home with my pets, and am lucky enough to be with someone who's just as excited about reptiles and exotics as I am. The collection keeps growing as we're able to do it sanely, and I just couldn't be happier with how things turned out. I waited a long time to be able to keep reptiles, and it was so worth the wait

I got into it to make an obsurd amount of money by breeding snakes. It has completely paid off for me as I am currently a millionaire because of it.

Ps: why does it say millionaire twice? My post is broken and no longer funny. grrrrrr

I love all animals, and was destined to have a job working with animals in some fashion. However, I am disabled (I have CFS), so anything involving intensive labor was out. The minimal labor and high return drew me to invest in snakes. I'm extremely happy with the choice. :)