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

How did you guys end up getting your first snake? What was it like? How did other people react? Etc. I am very curious :D

For me, I've always liked snakes and thought they were very intriguing, but would have never thought that I would personally get one. But one night in college I went to a house party, one of the people living in that house had a BP. He took it out and let some of his friends hold it, I remember being very scared because I thought the loud music was going to agitate the BP into biting me or something, but once it was in my hand, it just kind of "sniffed" at me for a little bit and it was very calm. I fell in love right then and there, I knew I was going to get one sooner or later. So last year in June, once I finally moved out on my own, the first investment I made was to get a BP. Of course the people around me weren't as excited, but it was awesome to finally have a little BP girl of my own. To see how much she's grown from when she was a hatchling until now is crazy, she used to be able to fit on one palm of my hand, and now she has to wrap herself around my arm because she is too big for both of my hands together. *tear* :)

What's your BP story?

well, i always loved to catch snakes since i was like 7, and when i was i think 10 or 12 or somewhere around there, my dad bought me a baby snow corn snake, and i loved it, sadly i was living at my moms house and it was over-fed, so next time i came over i found a dead snake where i left a live one:(:mad:. my first BP (my second snake), came around when i was like 14. i was in california staying at my uncles house and his neighbor owned a pet store, so my uncle said he would buy me one. so we went over there and i picked one out for the guy to put on hold till when we left, when we went back to get it the guy said that he was moving it and it slipped out of his hand and down a drain in the bathroom floor:(, so he let me pick another one and gave my uncle 1/2 off, and i still have him today:D (now im 20)
heres a pic
http://i972.photobucket.com/albums/a...0929111452.jpg

I've always liked snakes I grew up in the country here in oregon and would always run around catching garter snakes and racers, along with frogs and lizards. I remember I caught a garter snake once and feed it a small frog and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. Well I didn't really know about ball pythons or boas or any of that cuz I grew up in the country When I went to college I got a job at a pet store my second year they had bearded dragons and geckos there but no snakes. So I did some reach and decided I really wanted a snake I got a corn snake. It was cool and everything but I wanted some thing a little more exotic, so I looked on CL and found a male bp that came with a tank for $50. I picked it up and now 2 years later I have 6 bps my corn and I just picked up my first boa

My oldest sister had an adult male BP. I had already owned a couple snakes before handling hers, but that was the first Ball I've ever handled. I fell in love with how they aren't on-the-go like my Colubrids were. Three years ago I kept admiring this female Ball at Petsmart in a three-week time period. A few times after handling her during that time my mom said, "Okay, let's get her."

As of today she will always be my favorite snake. I love her to death and if it came down to it she'd be the only snake I'd keep out of all my others.:)

http://i609.photobucket.com/albums/t...hhsheyawns.jpg

My story is long but here it is:

Growing up I was afraid of getting bitten by a snake, so I never had one as a pet and never held one. My brother used to catch garter snakes all the time and I thought they were cool, but they weren't very friendly. :rolleyes:

When I went to college I lived in an apartment that had a no pet policy. I tried to find a pet I thought they would agree to let me have and I came across ball pythons. I started doing a lot of research, but in the end I was told no by my landlord. I finished college in May of last year and moved to Wisconsin for work in August. I had pretty much given up/forgotten about my desire to have a ball python by this time, but I did get a dog in September after moving. Well I had an empty 29 gallon fish tank and I was thinking about what I could put in. I ruled out fish because they really aren't that cool as pets, but they make pretty decorations. I decided I was going to get the ball python I wanted (too bad I never researched about buying from pet stores >__<).

In October of last year I went into the pet store that's super close to my house for dog food and wandered into the reptile section of the store. Being a horrible person who sub comes to impulse buys I left with a ball python (and my dog food). Given that I had forgotten a lot of what I researched by this point, not to mention a lot of it was extremely outdated to begin with, my setup was horrible. I also listened to the pet store and believed that she only need one mouse a week. She was probably 500-600g then. By January I could noticeably see that I wasn't taking even remotely good care of her, and she let me know with a bite to the hand, so I re-read all of the books I bought and re-did my research online. I drastically improved her setup (bye bye light, hello UTH), and started feeding her more.

Around this time I decided that I want another since she need a bigger cage. In February I found what has now become my favorite reptile store, Reptile Rapture, and I purchased a new setup for my first one and my first morph, a tiny male spider ball python. I also decided that I should bring my snakes to the vet, because I thought it was something that was commonly done. I got some horrible advice from my vet (see my first post), and I wanted to double check. That was when I found SnakebytesTV and Brian mentioned BP.net so I had to check it out.

I am happy to say that my collection has exploded in size and my ball pythons are now in racks and receive excellent care. My first ball python got back to excellent health in no time and is now a monster at over 1800g. I plan on trying to breed her to my enchi this winter. :D

My first BP Lily (taken last month):
http://i1139.photobucket.com/albums/...1/IMG_1377.jpg

My story starts waaay back. My mom used to tell me about the snakes she pet-sat for a teacher over one summer when she was a kid, who gave her a hognose as a gift afterwards. She always talked about how great a pet it was, how much fun she had taking care of it, etc etc. We had all sorts of pets growing up, but I never had a snake of my own (probably had something to do with the nosy dog, mischievous cats, and two younger siblings who liked to get into everything, lol).

Then in my first year of college I ended up rooming with a long-time friend of mine, and she got a baby ball python. He was the sweetest thing, and I loved helping take care of him and playing with him. A couple years later I befriended a girl who had a collection of snakes (and other herps), mostly red tail boas. I loved playing with them too, but I still had a major soft spot for the ball python personality and temperament.

Sooo I finally caved, and at an animal expo last month, I got my baby, Sekhmet. I purposely got her for her major attitude and unusual pattern. She's already calmed down a lot though,she didn't strike at me at all today, lol.
http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/w...kh10022011.jpg

I recently had a encounter with Rattle snakes while @ work cleaning,I looked down and bam he was around my foot chilling. I panic of course,it curled up and no shaking it rattle nothing till another employee pops up. Ten minutes later i'm up at the front desk dealing with other employee's when i felt itchy and brushed my leg when a baby snake slithered out,By that time i was ready to go home and be done with animals period for the day,Told my husband everything that went on when he thought getting my a snake was what i needed.
So today we went to the Reptile Expo and i got talked into a "Normal Bp"...
That's how i ended up with Keegan lol

I've always loved snakes and was forever coming home with a garter snake or a little brown snake or something. I had a variety of lizards, snakes, and turtles when I was a kid. My dad hated snakes though and I was only ever allowed to keep one small garter snake I managed to wrangle into the house. Ironically, snakes were my favorite reptile - I loved how they moved, how they felt in my hands, how much personality they had. And they were the one reptile I was more limited to because of how my dad felt. But my dad always tried to support my interest no matter what and I did have some other interests (I was head-over-heals for horses too). And he did let me keep that little garter which was an awesome pet.

Only about 1 1/2 years ago, I reawakened my passion for reptiles and decided I wanted to build a nice display terrarium. My hubby (another animal lover) readily agreed and I chose a BP to put in it. I adopted Ella from a Reptile Rescue. Obviously, we all know that BPs aren't the best display snake which I learned pretty quickly, but I loved having the more exotic type snake like a python and I loved how docile Ella was so even though her tank wasn't the pretty natural display I was hoping for, it meant I could keep trying with other species, lol!

We loved having Ella so much that one thing led to another and now we have a baby boa and I have plans to breed Peaches one day. And that means I'll be in the market for a male boa in the near future too. I love how snakes are like potato chips - can't have just one! :D

Incidentally, I named our boa "Peaches" after my dad. Peaches was his nickname for me when I was a kid and even though he didn't like snakes, as I said, he always supported my interests - even now. He didn't think much when I announced our adoption of Ella but he still never put me down about it and even though I'm 35 now and grown and married, he still supports me in everything I do. So Peaches was named in honor of my dad. ;)

This was back in November 2010. I actually never thought of owning any reptiles before. I was just browsing around the pet shop at the mall like I always do and happened to stop and stared at their ball pythons. A guy came over and was like, "they're pretty huh? I have one at home." I was like, yea, they're gorgeous but I'm scared of snakes. He and I started talking about his ball python that it never bit him or any of his kids. Easy to take care of, and only feed it once a week. I suddenly had the urge to buy one. But the pet shop sold them for $80/ball python so I checked out other pet shops. Petsmart had a sale for $40/ball python! I immediately drove to Petsmart and bought one on the same day. Best impulse buying ever!!! lol. I know, I know, don't buy animal from Petco or Petsmart, but hey!! I was new at this. Now I own 11 ball pythons (1.0 BEL, 1.0 Ivory, 0.1 Yellow Belly, 1.0 Spider, 0.1 Normal, 1.1 Albino, 1.1 Mojave, 0.1 Butter, and 0.1 Super Black Pastel on her way)! >_< I also got into other reptiles: 1 Tortoise, 1 Hog Nose, and 1 Green Tree Python.

Now my friends called me crazy snake guy. LOL

I've always been interested in exotics in general, but my passion for reptiles didn't get really sparked until I met a friend in high school who kept a pair of wild types. As a kid I used to run around in the marsh and get buckets of garters, so when I handled a BP for the first time I really enjoyed how they weren't as "wiggley" as garters (colubrids in general for that matter). I wasn't allowed to have pets in cages at the time, so I started going online and reading everything I could. Once I got into morphs and genetics I started reading about all reptiles I could, but I had a soft spot for BPs.

As soon as I moved out after graduation I started looking around at breeders and available animals, still wasn't allowed to have them at the house I lived in but I was fortunate enough to have a friend who would let me keep the snakes at his house. Along comes summer of 2010 and I picked up a female pastel and male mojave (wish I'd gotten two females now, but it doesn't much matter, I love both of my snakes to death :D ). Very soon now I'll be getting a fire female to add to the collection, and I couldn't be more excited! Also moved about six months ago and I can actually have my snakes with me :oops:

Pics!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...IMG_2404-1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...IMG_2296-1.jpg

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

That's so funny, most people that I've come across with ball pythons always have more than one lol they are very magnificent creatures. I've always wanted to get another one, I was going to rescue one a while back but my ex refused to let me (if it wasn't for the fact that I got andromeda behind his back, he probably would have said no to her too). But I'd definitely like to get another one, they are just so awesome! :)

Letsee....My story goes back to around 1990 when I was 5.

Typical kid growing up outside of New Orleans, LA. Loved watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It wasn't until I went to a back door BBQ that one of my dad's coworkers put on that I saw that his son had box turtles in a pen in their backyard! From that moment on I wanted turtles as pets. (I used to dream about going in my own back yard and being surrounded by hundreds of them!)

From about 5 until near the end of High School I owned numerous box turtles and even had a couple of clutches of babies hatch.

A few years later as I was nearing the end of college I impulse bought a Bearded Dragon. I saw it at a local pet store and just had to have it. It was a little baby and grew up to be a pretty magnificent lookin stud. I ended up making some friends with a girl not far from me that had a female and adopted him when I graduated and my mom refused to let it live at home. She is now breeding him with her female.

Fast forward a few more years. I finished college a couple years ago and got a job and moved out. Got me a pet cat to keep me company...and then that reptile crave started trickling back into my mind. As of that time I wanted to get a Sulcata Tortoise...(I have always wanted to own one) but living in an apartment and fearing that a baby Sulcata would outgrow my living space I looked for alternatives...

For the record I hate snakes. Ok...not really... But up until now...most all of my snake encounters have been in the wild and were usually venomous. Cottonmouths and copperheads when I lived in Louisiana and a couple of rattlers when I lived in Colorado. I dont like being unaware of a snake and then reaching down to get something from a shelf in the garage and being rudely scared!

However, my interest for owning a snake still peaked and I thought I would do some research and get a cornsnake as a start (a friend of mine when I was a kid had one that I remember seeing once or twice before he moved) I ended up getting a Ghost morph corn snake which was pretty cool. I ended up getting a second Corn Snake as an impulse because it was a very gorgeous morph and I just...decided I wanted it!

Now here's where I get to getting my BP. I wanted something...bigger...more docile. Corn Snakes are cool, and I love mine a lot. But I wanted the "flag ship" of my small reptile collection. So Just yesterday I went to a Reptile expo here in Houston. I went looking for a BP but with no particular morph in mind. I had a budget and nearly settled on a normal. I knew I wanted a female but other than that my budget was my limit and I knew the one that was for me would call out. Sure enough she did! A beautiful Pastel female hiding under a Spider in the same display box. I was able to negotiate down the price just a tad to get it safely in my budget and was home not long after!

36 hours later...here I am typing this! And I do admit...I can't stop looking at her!

Here is Bellatrix (Bella)
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62...t/DSC00806.jpg

Here is my Amber Het Anery Corn Snake (Orville)
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62...t/DSC00780.jpg

And the first Corn Snake I bought a Ghost morph. (Swayze)
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62...t/IMG_6950.jpg

I grew up in Indianapolis where I could see the skyline from my yard, but we had family members with farms and my dad always took my brother and I camping. Those trips are when I fell in love with reptiles. I may have had a snake that I caught in my youth for a few days or so, but I only got my first real pet snake a few months ago when a friend got married, bought a house, and asked me to foster his three BP's. I only wanted to keep one, and as he had all of them in a 40 gallon breeder:( I adopted 1 off to a good friend of mine, and 1 to a very responsible breeder from Lawrence Exotics. There were two 7 year old males and a 4 year old female. I chose to keep a male because we just clicked. I think he may be a reduced, banded or just a good looking normal. So now I caught the addiction and have not stopped reading all that I can, and am taking my first vacation days at work to go to the midwest reptile show October 16.

I got into snakes in hopes of curing my fear of them (sadly I can't seem to do that with spiders lol). You always fear the unknown. My first snake wasn't a bp but a kingsnake. It took me a long time to figure out his bark was worse than his bite. :rofl:

Snakes are kinda like tattoos....once you get one you want another! A couple of months after getting the king, I bought a bp. Best pet I ever had! It wasn't too long before I was rescuing snakes, mainly wc bps. My own pets were a king, a ball, a burm, and a red tail.

After Anneliese, my first bp passed a few years ago, I gave my collection away. I was heartbroken and for the time I didn't want to have any. I knew I'd get back into them again....just didn't know when.

About 6 months ago, after grieving over a baby sparrow I rescued, I went to a pet shop and was looking for something to ease the pain of being a bad bird mommy. They had bp's on sale as well as reptile starter kits. I called the boyfriend and told him (because he had wanted a snake) and he told me to get one and whatever it would need for a home. Now, I have a total of 5 in my home: 3 bps...2 of which are my kids (they're practically grown and grew up around snakes, loving them as much as I) and 2 albino burms. Collection kinda grew quick! :rofl:

My parents hated reptiles of all sorts but I was always a snake fan. I never caught any as a kid. But like I said as long as I lived in my parents house, I couldn't have any. I lost interest for years. Anyway, I ended up getting an apartment with my girlfriend (now my fiance), and we were looking at fish tanks, and ended up getting corn snakes. And the addiction grips my soul to this day.:D