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Whats your story?

Reptiles 101

Reptiles 101

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What was your first reptile and whats the story behind it?

I will start my first reptile was a corn snake i got him February 27 2012 i was 13 years old and i still have him to this day it is a male and he is 5 1/2 feet long now.


Now what i went thru to get him. For as long as i can remeber i had wanted a reptile, i would catch fence lizards and my mom would make me let them go and she would say there mommy missis them, one day i had asked my parents if i could get a snake i was instantly shot down with a NO!! And my mom even had the family docter try and get me not to want to get one. I was told that if i did research and could properly care for one then i could get a lizard, they counted on me not doing the research but i did and drove all my siblings nuts about reptile facts and how to care for them this went on for 5 years, finally my parents said i could get a reptile, then again i asked if i could get a snake and they said yes but, i had a size limit of 3 feet and i had to keep my room clean and i had to sign a contract that i would. Now i have a ton of bearded dragons a tegu, turtles, tortoises and my first reptile prime my corn snake. My mom now even vends with me at the reptile shows now.

That is my crazy story whats yours.
 
Is your room still clean? Lol. I got anoles at 7/8. Had about six in a custom cage. Man I remember those guys fondly.

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Haha. How do you like your tegu? And what kind? We have a tegu and she's kinda a sassy pain.

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I love my tegu he does hiss but has never bitten or even tried to bite me. He is a black and white argentine. I got him as a baby from tegusonly.
 
We barely have any hissing and I doubt she would bite. Just demands food and smacks me with her butt if I pet her in cage. She also does this weird puffed up standing thing when you mess with the cage.

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Mine loves to be pet just not picked up and even comes sometimes when called. Only got tail whipped once when he was a baby. Mine gets real puffy when i wake him up but calms down when he sees breakfast.
 
I know I'm taking this way off topic but my boyfriend bought me this tegu as a surprise because I love lizards. Only a tegu isn't as easy as a gecko or my anoles lol. Have you gotten yours to eat many vegetables? She takes fruits readily and meat, eggs, insects. But I've only had a tiny bit of luck with veggies.

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First reptiles were a pair of wild caught Gopher Snakes. Neighbor kid caught them and sold them to me for like $10 when I was in the third grade. I kept them in a card board box with a dirt bottom outside.

They were truly awesome snakes. I would put them on my neck and the two of them would just sit there forever. I could walk the streets and hear people oooh and awe over them. One eventually escaped, surprise-surprise so I let the other go.

Those two snakes started it all. I WAS HOOKED!! Spent much of my childhood out looking for and catching critters versus video games or sports.

Only later in life did I realize that I was probably freezing the snakes in that card board box, so they enjoyed wrapping around my warm neck AND trying to kill me for leaving them in a stinking box! Hah!:rolleyes:
 
First off cool thread man! My first "pet" reptile was a banana cal king that I got back in 90'-91'. I was obsessed with dinosaurs as a youngster and once I realized modern reptiles were the descendents of dinos my passion shifted. I started reading as much as I could about the different species of reptiles, amphibians. These were pre internet days so I spent alot of time riding my bike to the library. Lol! Scary right? The neat thing was my local library had a huge lake with a flood plane behind it where I could go field herping with my buddies.

My first python was an albino burm named Boo that I got in 93'. He was super chill but quickly out grew his 40 gal. I ended up trading him to the owner of a local exotic pet shop for a group of packman and pixie frogs. My reptile interests were all over the place. I guess they still are to some extent but for the past 10 years or so I have really been focused on Colubrids. Alot of them have attitudes when they are hatchlings/yearlings but you cant be the vivid colors and crazy patterns!
 
Oh ya dinosuars were my favorites before snakes and lizards to. My book shelf was filled with dino books growing up.
 
The thing that got me into the herp/amphib hobby was as follows.

When I was 5/6 years old living in Minot North Dakota. One of the older neighbor kids found a group of salamanders in one of the window wells in our backyard, when he showed them to me I thought, wow those are really neat. Fastforward another year and a half or so, and we were moving to Incirlik Adana Turkiye (Air Force brat). While living on Incirlik Air Base, I soon discovered we had Agamas that were all over base housing, along with tortoises. I couldn't tell ya which one for sure I caught first, a tortoise or an agama, but shortly after moving in I of course had caught both, and was hooked.
 
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