Im curious about you all...

I own 2 ball pythons that I love to pieces, and with that, I usually get bombarded with questions. But the main one for me is, "What got you into snakes?"

So now that's my question to you all, what got you into wanting a snake? Any snake in general, I'm just curious :)

a snake. AKA my girlfriend bought me a snake. Then i was hooked.

I've been into geckos for quite a while, then went into a small, independent reptile store. There was a snake there, an Indian something-or-another, named Sheba and she took one look at me and decided she was going to leave the person who was holding her and come to me. She was pretty big, and I crossed my arms. She tried to rest on them. I petted her a little bit, then set her front half back into the other person's arms. She was not slimy or gross, she was smooth and pretty. I went home and did tons of research on pet snakes on the internet. The next time I went in there, another snake was out on the shelves. I petted it, and it seemed to like that.

Back to the internet. Then I wanted to try a snake, but my biggest issue was that I wanted something that would not consider my geckos to be lunch. I looked around and was thinking of a hognose, when I came across a picture of a butter ball python that I really liked. He was only $50, so I figured he was probably not a sought-after morph, and if I were to get into snakes later, I'd probably regret not starting with something more amazing. I kept looking at other snakes then going back to the butter for days, then late in the evening I noticed snakes were disappearing off the for sale page of the butter's seller's website. I thought, "Oh,no! He's going to sell "my" snake to somebody else!!!" It was pretty late, about 10:30 here in Arizona and would probably be later in Texas, but he was obviously awake and working on his web site, so I called. Besides, this was urgent. He might sell that snake to somebody else!

He was awake and the butter was still available, but not for long. I sent payment as quickly as I could. He's a really nice-natured animal, and I'm pleased with him. The owner of the store (I told him he's guilty of getting me to like snakes), says he's the perfect beginner's snake. He's calm and puts up with everything without balling up or striking. Brickle is still my favorite. :)

My son got one for his birthday. A normal ball called lady. I fell in love and got an albino. Then 3 het pied females. Then 2 het pied boys and now my bedroom is full of snakes and i can't stop!!!

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as with most kids, i thought dinosaurs were cool. (they're still cool) and that got me into lil dino's - lizards. and then my 4th grade teacher had a corn snake he kept in the class and i got hooked and always wanted my own snake.

i used to think that they were crazy expensive (some morphs are) but a lunch time stroll into the mom and pop pet shop near my office revealed i could for sure afford one. so i started researching snakes, their care and found this forum. now imma full-blown addict. :D

anyway here's some of the snakes i saw on that first day:

http://i.imgur.com/mSpSEsjl.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/SINfmPxl.jpg

I grew up in the desert and snakes were all around me. I enjoyed all wildlife but the fact that people had (what seemed to me) a completely ridiculous fear of even the most harmless ones drew my interest in them even more.

I'd always wanted one, but was unaware for a long time that you could feed f/t prey. I'm a vet tech. I don't do live rodents if I can at all avoid it. When I broke off my engagement with my ex, my best friend took me to get a 'yay, you're single!' snake.

I also have to add this... My husband hated snakes from the moment I met him. After our first snake without his permission he was terrified to even look at the baby. It took him 6 months to touch one. 9 months to hold one with gloves on. Now 2.5 years later his always pulling them out talking to them. Making sure everyone is ok. Kisses them. And even looks on line for them for me. He came a long way. I. Turned a snake hater in to a snake lover. Except the big 3100 gram girl we just got has a bit of an attitude. But we are working on it! And he's a black guy so he would see a worm and run. Loll! Nice question. I love answering these!!!

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The ever silent lurker has a story she'd like to share :3 recent thoughts have led me to realize that my love of snakes was my first true act of rebellion, at the young age of 6-7ish...

The first five years of my life I lived in a location where snakes were common and typically feared by all, including me and my family. Many a probably harmless snake we killed in the name of protecting we young children from possible fatal danger. And I do confess to my young mind, dad looked like a knight over a felled dragon when he vanquished one of these terrifying creatures. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't see it as such if it were tomorrow, and father would no longer be so quick to grab a shovel at the mere sight of a snake (especially not if I may hear of it), but the imagery and emotions from that time do remain in my memory.

Then we moved. The new home was in the mountains, or foothills really, and snakes were rare save for the occasional garter type. I was 5, and just old enough to be getting truly attached to things and places and I was not pleased. I wanted to go back, I missed our old land. I even missed the snakes . From then on I was that kid. The one that would always grab the snake as one slithered past and say hi to it and let it go while everyone else, boy and girl, grown and child, squealed and screamed.

Mind, it wasn't till a friend got ball pythons that I even considered having them in the house. Seeing his, I wanted one so bad. I wanted a female who I'd name Speedy. It was all planned out. If only mother didn't say no snakes. Somehow along the way my brother talked mom into letting him get a scorpion (I think we said it would take care of our criket problem. I don't think that thing ever got a wildcaught cricket) but still no snakes allowed. Didn't help that I had like 7 bettas at the time, but it was still totally unfair. Turned out for the best. Had a bad split with that 'friend'. Still immature, it made me less interested in snakes as pets, though I still kinda wanted one. Just no ball pythons. Ball Pythons had been his thing.

So I got to college. Couldnt bring my dog, got very depressed, needed something more interactive than a small handful of bettas. Rules for student housing allowed 'small, furless, terrarium -bound pets with approval' so I researched, and my roommate said no snakes, so I got approval for a crested gecko. Mana came home with me within a week. Not a snake, but the reptile bug got a new bite on me. Went home, got Mokuba, realized all reptiles were living potato chips. Having one was impossible.

Again, I went back to school, out if student housing. Had my geckos, brought my dog, got a couple cats. The petstore had a 50% sale on all reptiles. I brought home a cornsnake. Well, that one died, to what I am pretty sure were my own husbandry failings, looking back. I researched, fixed what I could, waited. There was a reptile expo nearby. I brought home a male Anery cornsnake. Named him Rifter. He remains a joyous success. Already wanted more.

I still wanted to avoid ball pythons, still bitter or that friend. But my cousin and I went to an expo together with promise to talk each other out of purchases. We both left with normal ballpythons. (Well, mine, Nagisa, might not be, but thats a tale I'll share later and elsewhere ). And now we are both hooked, setting to get more as soon as funds allow.

So, please forgive the long post, probably more ramble than info per my normal style, but that is why I love snakes and how I got into keeping them.

My parents and I were walking along a trail near a river and we saw a brown water snake that had slithered out of the chain link fence. He was pretty big from what I remember. When we got closer he slithered away. The next day I went to Petsmart to buy myself another fish tank for more fish, and my dad, who had gotten interested in the brown water snake, asked and convinced me to get a snake. There was a ball python and a milk snake and I chose the ball python. It was on impulse, but it started something great. We didn't get off on a bad foot, either.

When I first held her, I hadn't held a snake of that small size before. She was staying still, in a ball, but when she started moving I got way more nervous. I didn't want to drop the tiny little guy. We went home with her and her tank and my dad set everything up while I let her stay in the box so she could feel less stressed. My mom hated us for the next couple of days but then she learned to love the new member of the family - which we named Medusa.

She's grown up so much. She was four months when I got her and now she's over a year old and man, I fed her a lot so she is big. Not overweight, but big. Her parents were probably big ball pythons. I'm expecting at the least for her to come to five feet. I'm hoping for six. She's about three feet right now.

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.