What got you into reptiles?

I'm kinda new here (so far am liking the community :D)
but I'm curious on how some of you found your passion

I grew up around all boys so bugs, lizards, snakes were a common thing around me

I've always been fascinated in animals that aren't the "typical" pet type (cats and dogs)
I mean I like them too but I'm more interesting in things.. a good amount of people don't like/ are afraid of

Welcome to the forums! :)

For me it was always dinosaurs. As a 4-year-old kid I could tell you all the Latin names of my favorite dinosaurs. Heck, I think I even had a dino-themed birthday party at some point. :P I remember holding a snake for the first time at the MN Nature Museum (it was a fox snake), and I kept talking about that for a long time afterwards. Then when I was 12 I was at the university playing a concert and I saw a student sitting in the hall with a ball python sitting on her shoulder. That blew my 12-year-old mind. And that was when I decided to get a snake. And I blame that snake for turning my house into a zoo.

Btw, the beardie in your avatar pic is absolutely adorable!!

My house feels like a zoo for me as well even though my collection isn't very vast
and it's one of the defaults here, I'm using it until I can take a pic of my relatively new beardie
I saw it and was like
"D'AWH"

It's amazing how quickly animals can take over a living space!

Oh lol I haven't seen that one before. It is very cute.

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Originally Posted by Crazy4Herps

It's amazing how quickly animals can take over a living space!

Oh lol I haven't seen that one before. It is very cute.

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I know right
you start out with one and then the next thing you know you're looking at them like
"How did I get so many?"

I have my own room for them though, so it's dandy


and yeah it's under the lizard category

i started out when i was like 7 by catching frogs and garter snakes and chasing my sisters around with them lol. i got my first corn snake when i was 10, first bp when i was 14, and i just got my first baby rtb at 20. ive always had something though, snakes, beardies, red eared sliders, fire bellies, a scrub python, finches, parakeets, rats, gerbils, and oh yeah a california kingsnake i found in front of my house (in Washington:confused: )

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Originally Posted by cmack91

i started out when i was like 7 by catching frogs and garter snakes and chasing my sisters around with them lol. i got my first corn snake when i was 10, first bp when i was 14, and i just got my first baby rtb at 20. ive always had something though, snakes, beardies, red eared sliders, fire bellies, a scrub python, finches, parakeets, rats, gerbils, and oh yeah a california kingsnake i found in front of my house (in Washington:confused: )

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That's pretty much how I was as a kid
my cousins and I would catch frogs swimming in the pool and lizards in the bushes :P

i wish we had lizards here, ive lived here for 14+yrs, and ive only ever seen one, and ive only seen one snake in probably at least 5yrs, its way too cold for most of them:(

it's very warm here so they're everywhere all year long :P

People often ask me this question (usually phrased as "Why snakes??"), and I'm never quite sure how to answer! I've just always had a fascination with snakes, and wanted one from the time I was a child... my mother didn't like the idea of feeding live mice, so the closest she got to letting me own them were lizards & turtles.

Then a few years ago I was working at a public library, when we hired somebody from East Bay Vivarium (Berkeley CA) to do a show for the kids... I told him after the show how I'd always wanted a snake, and he told me to stop by their shop sometime. A few weeks later I did, with the intentions of getting either a Rosy Boa or Bearded Dragon - but he said I seemed like a "Ball Python girl," so I left with a little BP named Delilah. As they say, the rest is history. :)

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Originally Posted by Lolo76

As they say, the rest is history. :)

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i think snakes are like heroin, you do it once, and your a life-er lol

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Originally Posted by cmack91

i think snakes are like heroin, you do it once, and your a life-er lol

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I've always wondered why people were so scared of snakes
I mean a hot snake I can kinda understand but constrictors? why? ):

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Originally Posted by cmack91

i think snakes are like heroin, you do it once, and your a life-er lol

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Yup... and it's probably an even more expensive habit! :oops:

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Originally Posted by yayforhanna

I've always wondered why people were so scared of snakes
I mean a hot snake I can kinda understand but constrictors? why? ):

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I don't really get it either, but then again I'm terrified of spiders - doesn't matter how big or small, and even the non-poisonous ones scare me. So I understand phobias, and remind myself of this when somebody's afraid of my snakes.

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Originally Posted by Lolo76

Yup... and it's probably an even more expensive habit! :oops:

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I don't know about that one
people lose everything the own because of drugs
but as in worth, most definitely!

they think theyre HOT, but then again, i think theyre "hot", even though theyre cold lol.

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Originally Posted by Lolo76

I don't really get it either, but then again I'm terrified of spiders - doesn't matter how big or small, and even the non-poisonous ones scare me. So I understand phobias, and remind myself of this when somebody's afraid of my snakes.

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thats the same reason i refuse to smoke around groups of people

I've been "into" reptiles for all of my life, at least all that I can remember. My family moved to Fort Worth, Texas when I was two. We had a whole back yard full of horny toads and none of them particularly objected to being caught and fooled with for a while. Some of them were so tame that if you caught black ants and offerred them on the end of a skinny stick or piece of grass that they would eat them for you.

So I'm going to blame a bunch of overfed horny toads for getting me into reptiles.

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Originally Posted by Lolo76

I don't really get it either, but then again I'm terrified of spiders - doesn't matter how big or small, and even the non-poisonous ones scare me. So I understand phobias, and remind myself of this when somebody's afraid of my snakes.

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I used to be scared of spiders
but I was at a reptile show and for some reason someone was selling tarantulas and thus conquered my fear of them and now I'm fascinated by spiders

Catching a garter snake while camping in northern California when I was about 5 started the fascination.....then I moved to South Florida hehehehe that just kicked my reptile fascination into high gear. I was always outside catching cuban brown anoles, and oh boy if I saw a true native green anole I was the happiest little kid. Then I got a bit older 9 or 10 and I got brave and started catching the big green iguana's and cuban knight anoles and some snakes like black racer's, corn snakes, water snakes etc. Ive always had a reptile whether it be a lizard or snake they have always been apart of my life and they will never leave :D

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Originally Posted by yayforhanna

I used to be scared of spiders
but I was at a reptile show and for some reason someone was selling tarantulas and thus conquered my fear of them and now I'm fascinated by spiders

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I recently tried to get up the nerve to hold a tarantula (also at a reptile show), but it just wasn't happening... one day, I swear. :oops:

My cousin came to my grandmother's house when I was 4 or so, was walking around and caught a little garter snake and stuck it in a small baby food jar for me. Snake was destroyed by my grandmother minutes later, but since then I have always had a thing for snakes. Moved to Tampa, FL and used to catch loads of native anoles and different snakes. Once I moved back to Indiana, I didn't have much chance to get a snake until last year (within a year I went from 1 to over 50, and now down to 35).

My parents have a photo of me at age 5, holding handfuls of garter snakes over my head. XD We used to catch BUCKETS (like, we actually had a bucket) of them when I lived in Michigan. So I guess it was only a matter of time before I got one as a pet. Time, and getting out of my parent's house for good. My mom is one of those people that is too terrified of snakes to even discuss having one in the house.

I've always loved the way they feel crawling on my skin. I'm a very tactile person, so I find that particular aspect quite appealing. I like my other herps too, but the snakes are really something special. They're so easy to keep! And once you have one BP, you might as well get more. You know. To make the food cheaper. Yep.

I guess the lizards are kind of a substitute for birds for me. I used to have a pair of cockatiels (they weren't able to handle a big move so I found them a nice home). And I miss them. But they are SO noisy and SO messy, and the stench females make when nesting is unbelievable. Reptiles are a nice alternative. You still get the "exotic" feel, but without the noise or smell.

Steve Irwin. Enough said.

I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark with my grandfather when I was 2 years old. Indy fell in the snake pit and it was curtains from there, obsessed ever since. Had no idea what that movie was even really about until I got into my teens, haha! All I cared about were the snake scenes...and the majority of the "snakes" are actually legless (glass) lizards.

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Originally Posted by Lolo76

I recently tried to get up the nerve to hold a tarantula (also at a reptile show), but it just wasn't happening... one day, I swear. :oops:

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Well, this thread is why I got a tarantula, even though I don't have any desire to hold it!

http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/sho...highlight=molt

As far as snakes, we got a leopard gecko right after the divorce. He was kinda snaky in the face. Joined a corn snake forum to do research and ended up with a western hognose instead! But after I joined the BP forum, I did just get my first bp, a normal male about a year old!

I have loved snakes and most other goofy creatures since i was a kid. I used to come home with buckets full of minnesota gardener snakes and get yelled at lol. Well years later i joined the army and after years of jumping around bases and a few countries came ome to northern mn. I got a call from my uncle who knew of someone giving away a snake. So i called the guy and he gave me my first ball python. A 9 year old male normal we named lucifer. now i have 6 ball pythons and plan on getting as many as i can and keep this hobby going iwth my soon to be wife and i hope our future kids also enjoy our passion. Thanks for reading

Well, to start off.... I was a baby and still living in Guam, and in our house we had house geckos and skinks come in all the time, and they were always fun to mess with. Well supposedly from my parents, when I was a baby I found a dead, dried up gecko....picked it up... and I really don't want to say the last part, but it involves ingesting something....:tears: But I've always been fascinated by reptiles.

Then I finally moved to Houston when I was 12(4 years ago), and told my mom I want a dog, but that didn't happen, so I looked for many alternatives. Relentlessly searching, I finally found what I wanted: ball python. My mom and dad said yes, but literally the night before I was going to get one, my mom's co-workers say,"OMG, your son wants a snake? Let me tell you all the bad stories of them!"Oh my goodness.... that stopped me from getting a snake for half a year until my mom finally gave in, BUT THEN my dad said no for some weird reason, so that was another half of a year. Finally, we had a family day out and we were near our local reptile store and I convinced them to take us there. We arrive and we see a cage filled with ball pythons. Well, you know how that happens:D

But now, I'm still in love with snakes, but I'm slowly phasing out of it and getting into cresteds, gargoyles, and leachianus. Maybe it was the gecko incident of long ago that made it my destiny to have geckos:rofl:

As long as i can remember i was catching bugs, lizards, and snakes. I got my first ball python at the age of 9 years old. My next snake was a motely anery corn snake at the age of 10. Then i got my crested gecko who recently past away at the age of 11. Now at the age of 12 i own a quaker parrot, a 10 year old normal male ball python, and my motely anery male corn snake.