Forgot to introduce myself!

[eskye]

Hello, I'm Elena. I'm a college junior English/Environmental Studies double major that has worked with many animals over the years. I have had dogs and cats since birth, and have been mucking out barns and caring for horses, cows, sheep, goats, llamas, alpacas, rabbits, geese, and chickens since the age of nine. My great grandmother who helped to raise me rehabilitated wild moose and wolves in Alaska for years, and when I came to know her we bred cockatiels and cared for orphan zebra dove hatchlings. As a child I was always interested in herps and would avidly go in chase of frogs, house geckos, and anoles in Hawaii. I cared for hamsters, rats, and mice in my younger teen years, and started on raising axolotls in the beginning of college. Now I live with my girlfriend and a grand total of somewhere around too many herps, and we have recently acquired two hedgehogs. I work part time at a library and part time at a mainly reptile but also fish store, as well as in rescuing and rehabilitating abused reptiles in the Portland area through a bearded dragon rescue. I primarily provide a foster home for smaller species of reptiles like geckos, snakes, and bearded dragons (as opposed to burmese pythons and monitors) while working towards an ultimate goal of doing the same thing for the rest of my life: working with animals, and more specifically, herps.

1.2.3 Crested Gecko 0.1.0 Fat Tail Gecko 2.5.3 Leopard Gecko 1.2.0 Panther Gecko
1.1.0 Bearded dragons 0.0.1 Savannah Monitor 1.1.0 Desert Iguana
0.0.2 Blue Tongue Skink 1.1.0 Sand Boa 0.1.0 Ratsnake 7.2.3 Cornsnakes 4.3.3 Axolotls
1.1.0 Andersoni 1.1 Blue Spotted Sal 0.1.0 Yellow Spotted 1.1.0 Taricha Granuloa
0.0.4 Triturus Dobrogicous 2.3.0 Steppe Runners 3.7.0 African Dwarf Frog
1.2.0 Floating frog 0.0.1 Tiger salamander

1.1.0 Hedgehogs, a mouse colony 1.8, and two 1.3 ASF colonies.

As for ball pythons, I have:

Males:
Albino 2012
Lesser 2012
Pastel 2012
Pinstripe 2012
Yellow Belly 2012
50% Pos Het Lav Albino 2010
One normal 2012

Females:
Spider 2012
Butter 2012
Yellow Belly 2012
Normal het albino 2012
Normal 2011

It's a bit disproportionate at the moment, but I'm hoping at the next show in January I'll find some more females on the lower end of the price range. I do intend to breed, most likely in 2014-15 when my females are up to size, but mostly just for hobby. I do breed axolotls and am working on Cresties, Leopard Geckos, and Ambystoma Andersoni at the moment. I haven't got much intention to breed my cornsnakes, mostly because of my lack of females. I'll look at obtaining some more that will work with my males' morphs and hets at the next show.

That's pretty much all. I'm looking at doing my senior thesis for environmental studies on the impact of my college's construction on the local amphibious species. They've been doing a lot of garden work, removing entire sections of land and replacing it. I happen to have caught four salamander species and two frog species in the exact areas they are working, and I'd really like to present a thesis to my incredibly environmentally-conscious school that shows how largely we affect local species. I'm excited to start a career in environmental research.

[carlson]

Hello there, you have a huge collection haha sounds like your having a good time with everything tho your gonna have to post pics of some of your herp friends if you haven't yet we all like saying oo pretty to animal pics. An nice choice of jobs I tossed back an forth between fire man and wildlife biologist (more into the herp end I was thinking) until the bio college I was set too attend informed me after all my finical aid I'd still have to pay 20 thousand outta pocket a year (not an option for my family, not as hard up as we were when I was growing up but still not that much money laying around and noone would give me a loan that big) so I'm going fire man route and gonna get a nice herp collection built so it can fill my off days . Sorry I get side track and just type sometimes so again welcome its nice to have you join our community of awesomeness you'll meet many good people with lots of knowledge they share freely

[eskye]

Here's one glorious picture. Normal female hatchling, her second meal.



(I know, ugly carpet. Temporary apartment.)