Hoarders (are you one?)

I was watching that show Hoarders the other day and WOW. The condition of those people homes where disgusting. I could not take it.

It got me thinking of a blog I posted on my website titled “Obsessed, Passionate or Addicted???” . Did I leave one out are we Hoarders? Not in the same sense as theses people who hold on to every little piece of whatever or just throw garbage anywhere.

Hoarder: a person who accumulates things and hides them away for future use. This definition as a noun I feel does not pertain to what we do. But as a verb I feel it does pertain to us Hoard•ed, Hoard•ing: To gather or accumulate a hoard.
1. To accumulate a hoard of.
2. To keep hidden or private.

We as reptile collectors do accumulate a hoard of many animals. Some people collect one species while others have a wide variety.

This was just something I was thinking about and decided to share it. So the question is, Do you consider yourself a Hoarder?

no way in hell.

If anything trips me in the morning it will either be A) broken or B) Thrown away. My place does get messy, but there is a difference between having some clothes on the floor and a pile in your living room for jars.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Samuel

no way in hell.

If anything trips me in the morning it will either be A) broken or B) Thrown away. My place does get messy, but there is a difference between having some clothes on the floor and a pile in your living room for jars.

---

What I meant was do you consider your self a Hoarder when it come to your collection of Reptiles? Not are you one of those people that leaves all kinds of crap laying around your house with a tiny path to walk around.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Repsrul

What I meant was do you consider your self a Hoarder when it come to your collection of Reptiles? Not are you one of those people that leaves all kinds of crap laying around your house with a tiny path to walk around.

---

No, I do not consider myself a snake hoarder. I don't buy without reason or intent. I guess it depends, does having 10 snakes make me a hoarder of snakes, or a hobbyist?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Samuel

No, I do not consider myself a snake hoarder. I don't buy without reason or intent. I guess it depends, does having 10 snakes make me a hoarder of snakes, or a hobbyist?

---

That is the question...:D

I have over 40 myself and believe me I see no end.

lol this thread is cool!! A little over a month ago i had a small collection. now i have 12 animals!! Hoarder??? i dont know but an active collector, yes

Nope, I am a business. No way would I have 40 snakes if I weren't. That's simply too much to care for, for a hobby.

I'm up to 8 snakes, but I don't consider myself a snake hoarder. I plan to get many more snakes as time goes on and I get the money. Being a college student doesn't leave much room for buying snakes. Plus I had a bunch of money saved up but that all went to my car on Monday :rolleyes: Bye bye $500 :tears:

Anyway, I'm quite sure people call me an animal hoarder in general. Our house isn't pristine and unlived in, that's for sure! All of our animals are well cared for and fed. Sometimes I think, man that's a lot of cats, but I love them dearly and couldn't get rid of one of them. The only time it gets crowed is pretty much all the time! :rofl: Our cats and dogs think they need attention and love at all times, so most or our time is spent with 4 cats and 2 dogs in the same room as us :rolleye2:

One of my aunts likes to live in a "show house" and she invited herself to sleep at our apartment before we bought our house and she told us to lock up our cats (2 at that time) because they were bothering her. :taz: Now I tell people if they don't like animals, don't come over.

Keep in mind most hoarders dont admit they have a problem, they have, in their mind, a valid excuse for keeping all that they keep. Animal hoarders feel they are helping their animal and whatnot.
I think a guideline needs to be set up to define a hoarder in pet sense..
Such as

:can you properly care for ALL of your animals
: Do your animals take up an obscene amount of your living space
: Is your health or happiness affected adversely by the amount of animals you have?
: Are you creating a main source of income or side income with breeding those animals?<certainly not required, but if you have 40+ animals, that would certainly be a valid reason>

IMO, devils advocate could easily say an enthusiast/hobbyist is just another excuse.

For myself I only have four BPs, but I would say Im not done at all.
That said I can properly care for my animals and obviously they dont take up much room at all, infact few people would even know I own them walking into my apartment. I do plan on atleast covering the cost of owning them with planned breeding, I can afford the vet visits I may need, and the only happiness thats affected is the relaxation and joy I get from seeing them happy and healthy.

no way, hoarders are effin slobs imo

A key in the definition of "hoarder" is how much the word "hide" comes up.

I am not a hoarder of reptiles. I most definitely do not hide them for future use.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mainbutter

A key in the definition of "hoarder" is how much the word "hide" comes up.

I am not a hoarder of reptiles. I most definitely do not hide them for future use.

---

"I do not hide them for future use" :rofl:

Hooray! I'm not a hoarder then!!! I can't very well hide all these cats, and I allow people to come over! :rofl:

Because I see breeding snakes as a business, I do not consider the large number of these animals I have hoarding. Even if I was only an avid hobbyist with 50 animals, I wouldn't even consider that to be hoarding. I didn't watch the show, but I'm fairly certain they misused the word in it. Hoarding implies the animals are kept in very poor conditions - basically they are acquired and stored away and forgotten somewhere. Like some sort of obsessive collector's sickness. I find it unlikely a true hoarder would seek to breed the animals either.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Russ Lawson

Because I see breeding snakes as a business, I do not consider the large number of these animals I have hoarding. Even if I was only an avid hobbyist with 50 animals, I wouldn't even consider that to be hoarding. I didn't watch the show, but I'm fairly certain they misused the word in it. Hoarding implies the animals are kept in very poor conditions - basically they are acquired and stored away and forgotten somewhere. Like some sort of obsessive collector's sickness. I find it unlikely a true hoarder would seek to breed the animals either.

---

I think with most animal hoarders they dont seek to breed, but its more of an uncontrolled breeding in alot of cases.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sariel

Keep in mind most hoarders dont admit they have a problem, they have, in their mind, a valid excuse for keeping all that they keep. Animal hoarders feel they are helping their animal and whatnot.
I think a guideline needs to be set up to define a hoarder in pet sense..
Such as

:can you properly care for ALL of your animals
: Do your animals take up an obscene amount of your living space
: Is your health or happiness affected adversely by the amount of animals you have?
: Are you creating a main source of income or side income with breeding those animals?<certainly not required, but if you have 40+ animals, that would certainly be a valid reason>

IMO, devils advocate could easily say an enthusiast/hobbyist is just another excuse.

For myself I only have four BPs, but I would say Im not done at all.
That said I can properly care for my animals and obviously they dont take up much room at all, infact few people would even know I own them walking into my apartment. I do plan on atleast covering the cost of owning them with planned breeding, I can afford the vet visits I may need, and the only happiness thats affected is the relaxation and joy I get from seeing them happy and healthy.

---

I do not consider myself an animal hoarder by any means. I just thought it would be an interesting topic.
Yes I do have 40+ snakes and they are all well taken care of. I check on all of them every day. They all eat or at least get offered food every week, even my gravid females. If I was not able to accommodate all of my animals needs I would not have them. When I bought my house my fiance and I made the decision to build up our collection. Breeding reptiles was a dream of mine since I was very little. I have always had some type of reptile or amphibian. But I was always limited to what I could have to do living with my parents or when I had my own apartment space and funds. Now I own my own house and have a very well paying job I am going for it. I am lucky enough to have a fiance who also has a great paying job and loves these animals almost as much as I do.

I hoard, anacondas under my bed, im using them to fight off the burm invasion the show ALiens was talking about, almost like the python vs. boa movies lol i see a hoarder as a person obseesed over ONE thing and must keep buying not a healthy obsseion but i collect swords, shot glasses and have a tone of horror movies posters but it all goes in the animal/ stevens personal space room

though non-snake people see people that "shove" snakes in plastic boxes with no rioom is hoarding, it goes back to the post " why have so many snakes" nothing is just black ans white, so people percive things differantly

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Repsrul

I do not consider myself an animal hoarder by any means. I just thought it would be an interesting topic.
Yes I do have 40+ snakes and they are all well taken care of. I check on all of them every day. They all eat or at least get offered food every week, even my gravid females. If I was not able to accommodate all of my animals needs I would not have them. When I bought my house my fiance and I made the decision to build up our collection. Breeding reptiles was a dream of mine since I was very little. I have always had some type of reptile or amphibian. But I was always limited to what I could have to do living with my parents or when I had my own apartment space and funds. Now I own my own house and have a very well paying job I am going for it. I am lucky enough to have a fiance who also has a great paying job and loves these animals almost as much as I do.

---

I apologize if you thought I was trying to say you are a hoarder, I was just trying to get across that maybe we could use some guidelines to separate what we consider hoarding and what is within reasonable bounds of collecting/breeding/being a hobbyist.

OMG that show is scary....:O I don't get how anyone can live like that....I cannot stand clutter. As far as my snakes.....or reptiles in general. I don't think so. I mean to me a hoarder is someone that is out of control and cannot find places to stack it all and it starts to pile up and up. I like too many expensive morphs to be able to afford to be like that...:P Plus I am anal as to how they are kept. I think if you were a hoarder the health might come in secondary as just getting more would be the most important.

I routinely purchase items that I see on sale or at an extremely good price that I know that I will use. I don't regard that as hoarding. For example, the price of coffee will fluctuate between $5 and $12 for a 34oz can. I buy mine 5 or 10 at a time when they are $5. A coworker of mine once saw me do that and started carrying on about hoarding saying that his minister said buying ahead was hoarding and was a sin. I buy everything that I can that way. I regard that as common sense. On the other hand I have been in many homes during my work career where people left only a narrow trail to get through their homes with junk stacked up to the ceiling. I suppose that I may be a hoarder by the definition of some but I don't even understand the question posed as it relates to snakes.

My mother has accused me of being a hoarder once, because of how many animals I have/had. All of my animals are well cared for, and receive vet attention when needed (except the rodent colonies). Heck, many of my animals eat better than I do. :D

I think it all comes down to what you can handle and the reasons behind so many pets. If you are someone that just keeps taking in animals, despite your lack of ability to care for them, I consider you a hoarder. There are people who just can't stop taking in animals and then have no way of caring for that number.

(Of course, I have 11 snakes and I definitely do not intend to stop there. :rolleyes: )

I don't have enough snakes to even consider myself an animal hoarder, lol. Only 3! No other animals since my BF is allergic to pretty much anything that has fur. Grr.

I agree with most people, that hoarders are people who are overwhelmed by all the stuff they have and only leave a little trail throughout their house. I could never stand that. If my desk gets cluttered I go on a cleaning spree throughout the entire apartment!

I have a general rule: If I don't use it in the past year, it gets thrown out.

I believe there are different levels of hoarding. Ive watched shows on that too. Alot of animal hoarders are people who are rescuing the animals because they love the animals so much but they dont have the resources to take care of them. They end up with sick, malnurished and over producing animals.

Then there are people who collect "stuff" and never clean or get rid of anything. One of my half sisters and her husband is like this sadly. They literally have a trail to walk through the house. Its sad but alot of these people do it to compensate for some other mental or emotional issue. There is not mush you can do to help these people until they are ready for help.

I think in the case of my reptiles I am not hoarding. In fact, I know I need to downsize a little. After the babies come and are ready to go, a few adults will be going as well. I have a number I want to stay at so if I need to part with a few adults to match whatever holdbacks I have then I will. Its a hobby and passion first and foremost. A side business second.

As for other pets. I have 2 dogs and one cat. Oh and 1 bearded dragon. The neighbor has 5 labs and I think they are nuts LOL. My house gets cluttered but I'm the type that gets tired very fast of junk laying around. I get so tired of it that I start throwing everything away that is not needed. I hold onto things that have sentimental value. I have alot of things that belonged to my dad and I still have a closet full of his clothes but I dont think thats an unhealthy thing. It took me 2 years after his death before I would go through anything and get rid of stuff but now im glad I dont have more room than I do. I like my space and I know my limits of filling that space. I believe if I had more room I would have more reptiles. As it stands I'm up to capacity without being overloaded.