I originally kept snakes as a child. I had an assortment of wild caught animals I kept outside as I learned the ropes. I was never allowed a pet snake inside- as my mother was far too afraid. I did; however, have a large assortment of lizards growing up. When I was old enough to actually buy my own snakes and supplies I ended up getting into all sorts of stuff. I kept and bred corns, balls, racers, rats, bulls, among other things. I had racks and cages- but the main reason I kept them was to make money doing something I could at least enjoy a bit- and it helped finance my ever growing collection of monitor lizards which where my true passion.

I ended up having a life altering series of events and sold everything except 1 animal that I moved into my new place with. I started having people give me random reptiles again that I fixed up and rehomed. Went through some ball pythons, corn snakes, bloods. Frankly if I'm honest though- they where all very boring to keep. Breeding was easy, care was easy, they didn't interact much. I ended up picking up a ~10 foot burmese python female and a small yellow anaconda. I wanted the challenge of the giant species and was hoping for more interaction/a more enjoyable keeping experience. The yellow anaconda was a monster, very fun to keep but scared the hell out of the other half, so I sent her off to a breeder (hopefully I'll get a pair off him from that same female in a few years!), and kept the burm for awhile. She ended up feeling no different than keeping a large ball python who ate rabbits instead of rats. She sat there, interacting with her was boring, I could look at her and knew she was just a snake.

So there I was, with 1 snake and feeling bored to tears, ready to just call it quits on keeping snakes as a hobby all together because it couldn't hold my attention. I hate to say it but once you interact with something like a smart varanid you've raised from a hatchling it just makes other reptiles seem a bit "bland" to me. Anyway, so I answered an ad on craigslist for a man looking to rehome his reticulated python. So I got in my car, drove 2.5 hours and shelled out $100 to get this "10 foot" retic out of a 2x2x6' tall cage (cage was beyond bad). In all reality he was about 14 foot, fed a terrible diet, and poorly handled, so hell I brought him home built a cage and started feeding him/getting him hydrated and putting him on panacur.

There was something about that snake. I could get him out, and he would interact and move with me, not just sit on the floor and look around. He wanted to explore, he wanted to climb, but the thing that absolutely won me over was I could look into his eyes- and tell he was looking back. I don't feel that with most snakes out there in captivity, this animal even with the smell of food around knew who I was, and that I wasn't dinner, he knew when I was getting water in his dish, and waited for me to bring it back and set it down so he could take a fresh drink. He reminded me a great deal of the intelligence of a varanid.

That single animal, that I got with the whole purpose of rescuing/getting to a breeder ended up causing me to fall in love with owning retics. I even this year produced them. I've produced plenty of clutches of eggs over the course of my reptile keeping carrier, but none ever had me staying up all night, with pure joy, looking in the cage watching every last egg be laid, and feeling so amazingly proud.

Sadly, I ended up selling off that animal to someone I thought I could trust who ran a pet store. They wanted to use him as a display, and had a very nice cage, plenty of food, and somewhere everyone could hopefully enjoy his tremendous personality and experience what I did. Those people ended up losing their store, never paying me fully for him (oh well), and now he's in someone else care completely. The downside of these animals is the sheer size doesn't allow me to keep many in my current living situation. I have a 17-18' female, a 13-14' female, and a 10'ish male. Moving into my new house and out of this crap apartment in a month or two so I can hopefully expand though.