Out of the choices offered, I chose "I began with BPs and now own both" but of course it really is more complex than that.

I began with snakes because I grew up in the country and would occasionally find & capture one. I would "keep" them anywhere between 5 minutes to a few weeks, then release them. I'm not quite sure what was going on in my head as far as keeping them a week or 2 then releasing them... it doesn't make sense now. I did provide them food and water during that time of course.

Fast forward several years...while I was in college I volunteered at a local zoo. One of the things I loved doing was taking out "contact animals" that we could walk around the zoo with to allow people to get up close & personal with some animals. One of those was ball pythons. I fell in love with BPs then, but never owned one myself.

Fast forward several more years...one day I was in a pet shop with my then boyfriend now husband, saw a BP, half jokingly asked him if we could get one, totally expecting to be told "no", but he said sure! So about one month & lots of research later, we got our first BP.

During that month, we also considered other species of snakes. My 11 year old daughter fell in love with corns. So it wasn't too much later that we got her a corn.

We now own several of both species, and I love both species (and have several more on my "must have one someday" list). I don't see my interest in either species dying out anytime soon.