Your first BP (do tell!)

I thought it'd be fun to start a thread where we can all talk about our first BP. I am curious and realize I couldn't pinpoint/name most forum members' first BP.. so please do tell!
Mine was a freebie I got from a Petco in Cheektowaga, NY.. it had been returned several times for being "aggressive" and this girl gave her to me. We got talking because mark (my boyfriend) has lots of tattoos and so did she. Well, I went home, researched and the next week we went back for our new baby. This was back in 2002.
Sadly, she ended up escaping her tank and passed away in our basement (it was wintertime.) From her, I learned the importance of secure cage locking. I soon got Ginger (who was then Goblin; though she was a male!) And thus my BP addiction was born out of one surreptitious visit to Petco.
So what's your story??

Well I PM Chris and asked if he had any near or breeding sized gfemales forsale and well.... he didnt so i asked Adam...well he didnt...so I asked adam about normal female hatchlings....he had some!! he gave me a choice of 4 !! And there was one that was black backish and I really realy like black backs and reduced patterns! So she was the one!:carrot:

Here are a few pics of her.. her name was,well, the word for a female dog (she had a WICKED temper!!!)

http://gallery.pethobbyist.com/data/3979ballup.jpg

On the right:
http://gallery.pethobbyist.com/data/3979untitled.jpg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ginevive

Here are a few pics of her.. her name was,well, the word for a female dog (she had a WICKED temper!!!)

http://gallery.pethobbyist.com/data/3979ballup.jpg

On the right:
http://gallery.pethobbyist.com/data/3979untitled.jpg

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Oh shes gorgeous!!!! I want her !! I like spunky females.;)

i my my fisrt (still do), from a store called world wide aqurium and pets for $25, he was in a 10 gal tank with 25 other balls, he just stood out in the mass of colors. ended up naming him raphael. this pic is from last year. is is attempting to breed this year.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...ale_ball11.jpg

so, i was dating this guy named Ian...He had a BP, and i went upstairs to his attick with him...well, i saw the snake and was absolutley fascinated. I was sitting there, "awww! I want one!!" Well, i wouldnt put her down, and he told me that there was a Repticon show coming up, so i went with him, and he bought me a BP. well, the Repticon and F.I.R.E. shows are coming up, and im going to get another snake :) i figured, if i limit myslef to a new snake only whent the shows come up, i will not overload on snakes. lol.

I've said this a lot i think:

I got crowley from my friend who when i was bitten by the BP bug back in early 2004 decided she wanted one too. Her mother had had one back in college and they set up his cage accordingly. A massive glass tank, screen top with a heat lamp and i dont remember now if there was a uth or not. He had some sort of.. bedding that some people here use- it looks like bark or such? not shavings and it was safe but i prefer paper. Any who, I had done the research and she had not. When crowley (then called Baby and assumed a girl) wouldnt eat for nearly six months I tried to tell her several methods, but of course, she knew it all because her mother had had one and anything i tried to sneak in as a comment fell on deaf ears. I was frustraited but knew that BPs could go on 'fasts' and thought he'd hopefully get hungry enough. Ugh. at one point she wanted to give him away and i didnt have the cash to do it. She had him up until April this past month when i paid 50$ for him+tank+stuff.
Dont know if anyone remembers that post where I talked about him having a 'black' shed. I think it was old shed that didn't come off entirely ontop of the new shed + the fact we removed that bedding, cleaned him up and raised his humidity. If you take paper and cover it in wet mushy mud and then ball it up and pull it out that's what it looked like. D8

Now, Tony and I love him more than any other snake we have because he was/is our first and laugh as you may at my petty normal male, I know if it ever came between him and any morph i may like, I'm so severly emotionally attached to the guy I would give up the morph- or any of my snakes- to keep him.


No, you cannot have my pastel- i said IF.
(jk)

(dont hate) lol

I got my first BP when I was in, I think, third grade. I got him for Christmas. He did fine; never a refused meal, no matter how much I handled him. Unfortunately I had to get rid of him. Since then, I haven't had any BPs until about three months ago (July).

I had gotten interested in bp's and had done a lot of research. I stumbled across kingsnake.com while doing research and finding out the Tinley NARBC show was in about 2 weeks. (I had also stumbled across this site in my research). That weekend I went down to the Chicago Reptile House (in IL) to pick up all the caging as I was going to get an animal at the Tinley show. I finally get down to the reptile house and looked around it, and the other two stores associated with it. (This was 2004)

I had already found out how long bp's live, so I held a few in the store (for quite a while) while Jeff? (one of the owners) ran around helping other people.

Later, Jeff hands me a baby ball, which promptly pees on me and slowly uncurled. He then ran off for a while to help the other customers.

Jeff comes back "Can I put the snake back now?"

"Oh no, you've sold me, I want this one".

I drove home with a baby ball python going into shed in a paper bag, and everything else I needed. I soaked him in warm water while I set everything up.

This is a year old picture, but here's a rough idea of the size change. The container pictured was Issa's first hide.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y21...eyearlater.jpg

Issa is the snake in my avatar.

I haven't gotten new pictures of Issa in a while, I should :)

A friend of mine at the time had bought 2 baby balls from petco, and he mother hated snakes. She was trying to keep them hidden in the darn closet! (We were around 13 at the time) She asked me if I wanted them and I so I took them - for free. I still have them to this day, one male and one female. I love them both to death!!

In January/February '05 Karl decided that he wanted to get some sort of reptile for his 20 gallon tank that was vacant. As Karl is known to do, he gets an idea in his head and doesn't let go - but doesn't really do the research necessary and promptly purchased a baby green iguana from the pet store for $25. I was livid! But we did the best we could to try to take care of little Zeus, but I believe he was sick when he got him and he never thrived in our care and passed away within a few months.

I was determined that he would NOT get another impulse pet and that I loved the ball pythons I had seen at the pet store. So I asked him if I could use the tank for a ball python and he said yes. Did a lot of research, googled for "ball python forums" and just lurked and soaked in as much information as possible, read care sheets to death and finally found a site that had a good rating on Fauna called Scales in CA (now out of business) and found Kashmire.

I've been in love ever since and they didn't warn me how addictive they are.

Then in October or November of '05 I was in AIM with Joanna, Becky and Christie, I believe and we were all looking at Will Bird's site and going Ooooh - look at #356 - she's gorgeous - and so on. And those awful enablers had me talked into getting another, which turned into getting three instead of one! It's been a great ride ever since!

Kashmire last spring (need to take updated pictures):

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e9.../Kashmire2.jpg

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e9.../Kashmire4.jpg

Aw, thanks for participating everyone!
I just love these snakes.

I got mine a few years ago from a pet shop we stopped at after a soccer game. We were actually getting some bird food for my sisters bird but I ended up buying my first Ball. Not until after I got him did I relize what bad shape he was in, mites, ticks, not eating for 9 months. We had to bring him back into the shop a few times for them to give him some medication for internal parasites. Ive only been back to that shop once since then and I now relize what poor conditions the animals are in.

I got Sebastian from a "snake breeder" who I found on myspace by accident who lived in Maryland. Talked to him a bit, told him what I was looking for. He sent me pictures of a few he had for sale at the time. Drove over to his house one day and picked one out. At the time I didn't think really thing of this guy, but come to find out we are like two pea's in a pod - that is how much we have in common! So now we are very good friends and both the a total love for snakes! He always ask how my guy is doing and he likes knowing that he can really watch one of the babies he produced grow up and have a good life, etc.

That is Sebastian on my user picture... *GRINS*
but here is the whole picture of him when I first got him. WOW he has grown!

http://willowdaisy.com/images/d/1811-1/sebastian.jpg

i live in a house with 10 other snakes ( mostly boas and kings) and i love them all dearly... but i knew i wanted to get one of my very own and not just love on my housemates babies... so i started to do some online research, looked at picstures, caresheets, anything i could get my hands on about different breeds of snakes... i i originally purchaseda 3 month old RTB at a show who only lived about 2 more months, she died suddenly of an unknown illness but was much loved and well cared for while i had her. It took me a while to get over that first experience and in that time i had really looked into BP's, i loved the way they were patterned and i loved thier little duck -billed faces... when my roomates asked me if i wanted to join them on a road trip to a reptile show in Maine i knew that i would probably come home with a new baby... sure enoug hafter looking around i kept coming back to the same little guy... and thats how i ended up with my Imriel!!


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...-6-cropped.jpg

of course the Manchester NH show is this saturday.. anyone want to place a bet on when ill be getting my 2nd BP??? lol

My first and second aren't very impressive, they were harchlings from a petstore that didn't know what they were doing and couldn't help me with any of my questions with why they weren't feeding (over 10 years ago). My next one is my big male. I had convinced my parents to let me go into our friend's petstore and let me hold one of the balls. I held him and was reluctant to put him back in the cage. My parents knew that i still wanted another one over 2 years after the first two, so while in Stop and Shop, my mom saw how bummed i was about having to give the snake back. She said "so you really liked that snake huh??" I said yea i did, then she looked at my father (who has a deep deep hatred for snakes) and said ok, you can get him. I was so happy. I still have him today, about 8 years later, big and happy, with a gorgeous little girlfriend.


~mike

monty my first and only bp so far i seen him in a tank at a store that had just newly open and i loved him at first site so i went to the kid that worked there and asked him i i could see the bp. i put my hand in the tank and he crawled right into my hand and the condition he was in he was dehydrated and not really well cared for he had no water dish in his tank at all and no hide. so i instantle bought him and hes been eating and fine ever since then i lost him in the wall of my house but thats another post i already posted about

and thats my story

My first BP was actually my first two BP's... a friend of mine was moving out of state and asked if I could take them for her... so I did.

Mine was a bit of an impulse buy. I saw it at a pet store/garden store for $60 and decided that I had to have it. I was told all I would need for the tank was a overhead light and the tank. The next day I came home with my ~21" snake and put it in a 10 gal tank with a half log as a hide. I searched for ball python forums on yahoo and found this place. After a few hours of browsing, I realized my setup was definetly not right. I went out and bought a UTH, a dimmer, and 2 new hides that night. Since then my collection has grown a tad. Next came an 06 BCI around the same length, then came my 02 BCI, around 6.5' and now soon to be coming is cueball's het albino female and a het albino male for xmas.

My first bp actually belongs to my daughter. I had a corn snake for several years, and exposed my kids to snake via that snake. 4 years ago, my daughter let me know that she wanted a snake for her birthday. A friend of mine had a bp for sale, but I really wanted to get her a corn. This friend told me about an upcoming show, so we planned to go, and bring home a snake. We made the rounds, and Mandi was eyeing a bp, actually the same bp that had been offered to me a week or so before by my friend. We wandered through again, and I asked her which snake she wanted. It was the bp that belonged to my friend. Now, between my son, daughter, and I, we have just under 40 bps.

Here's Dutchap shortly after we got him -

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...5/Dutchap1.jpg

and a more recent picture -

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...5/Dutchap2.jpg

Steve

My very first bp was a rescue i named Ron
he was in quite a state , when i got him he was serverly burnt and very under weight :( tbh i dint think he would recover but i took him on and with alot of patience and hard work i got him back on track , i took me about a year to get him eating again properly again but his body was so scared from being kept in such appauling conditions :( he was kept in a 1ft tank with a 100wt bulb (no guard) and no hides :eek: he healed up well but was left with scarring but he was a fighter and is still doing brilliantly :) .
I had him for another 5 years after that but had to sell him along with my other snakes when i went travelling as no one would take care of them :( but i made sure that Ron and my other snakes went to a good and well experienced home , i have heard he is doing well and has never posed a problem for his new owner and is still eating like a dust bin :D

I got my first BP with thanks to these forums! Came over here researching about ball pythons as my fiance and I were really interested in one and I wanted to learn everything I could. Then Jo PMed me and told me that Jamie had a couple of little males available! So I contact Jamie (who's helpful and friendly as all get out!) Next thing you know, here's our little Gomez from Glass Reptiles! Such a healthy beautiful chunker! This was really shortly after joining the forum too, that's how awesome these guys are. Got me hooked! Gomez is our first, and most definitely won't be our last. :) Gonna breed him to a lovely morph girl Morticia eventually!

http://pics.livejournal.com/medusaso...awpsr/s640x480

well i've wanted a snake for quite awhile, i signed up on this site about a year ago with out a snak, and this year at the narbcs show at anaheim i got my first snake. my friend and sister each got a ball pythons as well. so i was glad after getting my snake for hm... two years of waiting

brian at chicago reptile house was able to give me a 10 dollar discount on my 'reduced' female, so yay! she's got great temperament

my friend was unable to keep her snake , so i'm keeping it for her...

the big thing is my mom doesn't know! (shh!) i hid the tubs, but my dad and grandma are aware of them, so one day she will find out...

Well, in mid-2004 (I was about 14 at the time) I decided, after spending my whole life chasing snakes, frogs, lizards (you name it, lol) that I wanted a snake. I did some research and had pretty much decided that a BP was it. I loved the way they looked and behaved when I went into various pet shops and held them, and after about six months of 'casual' mentionings of how wonderful snakes are and BP's in general, I managed to convince my parents to allow me to buy one. My mother hated snakes at the time, and thought they were squeamish. Even when I brought in a few from outside, she just wouldn't touch them...I couldn't figure out why not...:rolleyes:


Anyroad, we already had an old 50-gal fish tank, so we went out and bought a screen top, and then went on our merry way to buy our very first BP. My mom and I did, anyways. We went to a few stores before I found the one in a little hole-in-the-wall reptiles-only shop whose name I can't remember. He was in a little 25-gal tank with about six others and I held all of 'em before deciding that I had to have him. He was the prettiest, the healthiest-looking, and he was perky and interested in me. He was darn cute, too! :D

Anyroad, got a too-big hide, too-big water bowl (he's since outgrown the hide, lol) and a heater, and...he's still here in my room, currently weighing about 900grams and trying to push the 10lb weight off his tank to escape. >.> Imagine my surprise when one day the 5lb weight went falling to the floor in the middle of the night...Lol. Hopefully, I shall be getting a second soon!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MedusasOwl

...Gomez is our first, and most definitely won't be our last. :) Gonna breed him to a lovely morph girl Morticia eventually!

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Sheree,
Just had to mention that I have a Gomez and Morticia also, both het pied. Morticia's got quite a ways to go before she's big enough to breed, though. Maybe next year!

(also have a Herman and Lilly!)

Good luck with your Gomez and Morticia!
Steve

Still have my first bp and at this time my only bp Ozzy.
I got him back in 2003 at Petco. His first set up was a 20L with a screen lid covered mostly w/ duct tape to hold in temps and humidity. Had the old heat pad under 1/3 of it and a small lamp w/ red bulb on the cool side. I also used a TropicAire to help w/ the humidity.

He then in 2004 graduated to his Animal plastics T-11 w/ heat cable which is where he still resides.
I did get a female rescue in 2004/2005 and kept for a while in a 20L but then my life got really busy and it was all I could do to give one the attention and care it needed so I posted on here and found her a great home w/ Adam.

Now things have settled down a lot and I am in the market for my dream bp a Pied.
But Ozzy will always be the love of my life since he was my "first" :)

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil.../3/014_11A.JPG

Opps forgot to post a pic of him when I first got him
So here it is

My first was a sweet little gold beauty named Vera. I got her when she was just a little worm and she was perfect from day one. Never refused a meal, never struck at anyone. This may sound strange but I'm convinced she knew who I was and enjoyed being handled. I would walk up to her cage and she would begin slithering up the side and wait for me to remove the lid. Then she would crawl into my hands and sit there as content as could be. I thought this was awesome. Unfortunately she acquired a severe RI and despite my best efforts to convalesce her (shots and tracheal meds) she passed away. She is definitely the best snake I have ever had.........chris

Quote:

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Originally Posted by hoo-t

Sheree,
Just had to mention that I have a Gomez and Morticia also, both het pied. Morticia's got quite a ways to go before she's big enough to breed, though. Maybe next year!

(also have a Herman and Lilly!)

Good luck with your Gomez and Morticia!
Steve

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Oh, that's so cute! Gomez, Tish, Herman and Lily!! :love: Hehe! I love it! We're hoping for a morph Tish eventually, either Axanthic or Mojave, we'll see when we actually have the space and money. ;)

My first BP I got when I was 11-12. Since then I was always captivated by pythons. I had her for about a year or so, but something about giants always caught my attention. I decided to trade her up for a Burm when I was 13. I acquired a female Albino Burm I had until I turned 16. I bred Burms for my first time when I was about 14-15, and at that time I had about a dozen Burms.

Haha not much of a Bp story but it's what happened :D If it weren't for that BP I probably wouldn't even be into snakes nor photography right now.