Why are you in the reptile hobby?

Sideways story,

When I was a kid we went on holiday to a farm owned by relatives.

He thought the only snakes on his land were venomous ( I found another species that, according to convention, shouldn't have been there but never told him about it ). This was the european adder on his fields riverbanks etc and he wanted them eradicated. I was about 10 and didn't know any better so he told me to catch as many as I could. To do so I, obviously, had to learn quite a bit about them and their habits. It took me about a week to learn he was being silly about it and get interested in them myself.

So I caught a few everytime we were there, showed them to him and quietly relocated them. My parents however remained totally against snakes in general - especially when I got sent home from school for taking a live adder into biology in a lemonade bottle.

Within two weeks of moving into my own flat I bought Cleo, a female royal python still sitting about 12 foot away from me as I type. She is still my favourite and an absolute angel of a snake. <3

Rather like Dianne, I grew up fascinated by frogs, toads, turtles, & salamanders in a rural setting* and none of which I ever kept, until my family moved to a
populous suburban area with no such wildlife. I've always loved animals & it wasn't until I was an adult that I was offered a snake (a pet I'd never considered
before) & "the rest is hissstory". :snake:

*The closest I ever got to a snake as a kid was either a rapidly-disappearing racer or garter snake, or the shed they left behind. And all family members were
firmly anti-snake, though I do remember a program at my grammar school by a man wearing jungle garb & showing all sorts of snakes, one of them enormous.
So maybe that planted a subliminal seed?