Im curious about you all...

Chased garters around as a kid.

I like animal care in general. Homesteading is a good excuse to spend all day doing what I want, but I also have lots of pets with no real utility justification.

About two years ago, on a political forum that I frequent, someone posted a link to ViperKeeper and an Elvis video. I like the scientific side to snakes, but also the cosmic side. They reminded me of spinning (another hobby of mine). ...just something so timeless about them.

So, skip to now, I have two snakes (cornsnake, desert king) in planted bio-active vivs, and a rosy boa in a dry naturalistic display. Still no BP (got carried away with goldfish this year), but still have plans for one (probably a pretty normal from Brian Gundy, I also want a pair of tarahumara boas from Russo at some point). Space is an issue right now - I'm not in this hobby to keep a bunch of snakes in a rack, and one 36" long ExoTerra viv per snake takes up a lot of floor space. After those additions, I'll probably be done. Carpets, retics, big boas, etc. will just have to be enjoyed vicariously here on BP. :)

Lately, I've been researching parrots.

This might be kind of ridiculous, but it was ORIGINALLY from reading the Harry Potter books and when Nagini, Voldemort's snake, first showed up in the latest book... That was when I was 11 years old. :P

So I wanted a ball python ever since then, but my parents HATED snakes and were scared of them. Obviously, the more I looked into snakes at that age, the more I really wanted one. So that was that until I graduated college, and got my first ball python within the same month of graduating! LOL

I was in the 1st Grade when I held the biggest Burmese Python at a Local Park, here in Manila. That is still the biggest snake that my shoulders lifted.

3rd Grade when we caught a Wild Reticulated Python in a creek near our house ( Damn, retics are free here :D) I outgrew handling a retic, which some owners consider an intermediate species to be owned by a beginner, then I just , this is just a snake! Omg, I didn't realized that until It struck me while feeding him *he was 3 years old, and I'm on 6th.


2010, when my brother bought an Albino Burmese and a Blood Python, unfortunately the bloody died because she refused to eat for several weeks, maybe stress made her go loca! But great thing is, I still have the Albino Burmese, we controlled his feeding intesity down to a single meal, every 3 weeks, Can't have them growing that large :P But still a healthy 7 ft snake :D The retic just got donated to a Zoo, by my brother.

2014, when we had our first Ball Python, a CB Normal, with reduced pattern, wishing to be a possible het for pied. Still can't prove him out, my female dinker is just 1 year old :P I also got a Bumblebee BP :D

We took our little boy to a local pet shop seven weeks ago as they were having a "safari" night and taking groups of young kids around and letting them play with the different animals. When we got to the reptile section, no one had the nerve to hold the BP, so I stepped forward and held out my hand, ready to be completely grossed out. I was blown away by how awesome it was. I talked my wife into holding it, as well, and our little 3yr old boy got a kick out of gently touching the snake. He told us that he wanted the snake instead of the guinea pig we were originally planning on getting.

The wife and I spent the remainder of that evening and the next day learning as much as we could about BPs and getting a proper enclosure put together, then we drove over to the pet shop and saved the underfed and stressed out snake from his bare tank with no hide. He just had his fifth meal with us two nights ago and is weighing in at just over 230g counting the full belly. This is a huge improvement from his emaciated 116g weight that we purchased him at 7 weeks ago :)

I've been hooked ever since we got him. I don't handle him every night, but on the nights I do pull him out he is constantly exploring around my arms and head. He is obsessed with my cell phone. I can't play with it whenever I'm holding it because he starts stretching out over to it and will slither over the screen and mess up whatever I'm doing haha

I will be getting my first bp next week. I found a wild gecko here in Oklahoma at my work (that ran up my dads pant leg) and I got him home did some research on em and went to petsmart to get heat a hide and all that fun jazz. While at pet smart started eyeballing the iguanas snakes frogs and thought having a snake would be cool and I'm a little scared of being bit by one. So I started looking up local breeders and doing research and I have one on hold for pickup once I get my parameters right on my tub. So love of animal (have dogs cats gecko and 110 g SW fish tank) & the small fear I have of being bit by snakes is why I will own a snake in the very near future. When I go pick up my snake I wanna ask the breeder to just have a snake bite me so my small anxiety will diminish. 🙃

When I was about 6 a guy came to our school with lots of various animals, one of them was a large snake (I don't remember exactly what kind, but it was 10 or more feet long). A handful of kids got to line up and hold it together, and I was one of those kids. I've loved snakes ever since.

I remember it like it was yesterday, I was going to Petco to buy some supplies for my rabbit, I was curious to check out the reptile section. I looked at all the lizards, tortoises, turtles, frogs, until I came across corn snakes. They we're the cutest thing in the world to me! After about three months of thinking and changing my mind, I ended up with my beloved baby ball python, Sammy. :)

I spent a lot of time at the local pet store, having moved out and added a couple lizards, fish tanks and ferrets. They special ordered a ball python and no one picked it up. No one at the store wanted anything to do with it. Somehow I ended up researching snakes, setting up a cage, feeding it and when they were closing up shop a few months later they sold him to me for $35 with some free mice. Took me about 8 years to add a second snake but now I own 9.

I caught a brown water snake in a pond near my house when I was a kid and was hooked. 1980/81 time frame. I was lucky enough to have a fantastic mom that let me keep anything I wanted as long as I kept them contained and took care of them.