How'd you get your start?

[Wowoklol]

In Leos or reptiles in general? Life story time!!

Reptiles: Spent most my summers growing up on my aunt and uncles farm. They have a couple nice big ponds filled with fish, turtles, some snakes and a pair of beavers I poked at the animals quite regularly but never really kept any(cept the fish to clean and eat!) until early teens when mom let me buy an American Anole. Have kept those, an iguana and ball python since along with a plethora of aquarium fishes, both marine and fresh water, and plants

Leos: A couple months ago at a local monthly reptile expo. Walking around looking at the tables of reptiles, the leos really caught my eye with their colors, chubby bodies/tail and easy going demeanor and smile!! Whats not to love?? Had a pretty rocky start though due to a little AFT ejecting its tail in my hand after the breeder Barely touched it to try to sex it. Was sleeping in my hand and was startled I suppose. That was like the second gecko I had ever held.. Haha. 2 months later, I'm the proud papa of 4 little leos. 1 Female redstripe RAPTOR, female SHTCTB ph/RAPTOR, female bold stripe snow eclipse het ??? and a male enigma tremper het blizzard

 

[OnlineGeckos]

I had an iguana, fish tank, tarantula, and anoles when I was a teenager. Back then leopard geckos weren't popular, and heck crested geckos weren't really rediscovered. After moving out I had to give up all the animals to start fresh on my own.

15-20 years later, I started looking into getting "something" again. Iguana was a no go for me this time because they got too large, and got aggressive towards the end before I gave it to a petstore. Anoles were a possibility as they were fun when I had a colony of them. No tarantula for me now either as my tarantula got huge, plus I never really could hold it heh. No snakes because well, they're snakes.

I was happy to find chinese water dragons and beared dragons, they looked like a cool Iguana alternative without the adulthood temperament. But while reading on them, I just happen to come upon a website that suggested leopard geckos for a first time reptile owner. So I read further, started looking at the pictures, saw so many different colors of them, watched no less than 50 youtube videos on them. We had a clear winner, their morph variety made them more fun to collect and raise than the 1 color iguana, beardie, or water dragons. They also don't get so large to require ridiculous caging sizes. I can have them and still look neat in my home, without scaring my guests or chase my g/f away. Really, they are the perfect pet for people who don't have the time to spend with dogs/cats, but yet want something that they can hold every once in awhile. And omg they don't make a noise, and poop in the same spot, where have I been all these years!?

I initially got 1 tank and 2 baby leos before telling my g/f. After my g/f found out about it, she said she loved them and made me go out and get more. So yeah, the start of my addiction to leos.

 

[ElapidSVT]

when i was 5 there was a man a few doors down that kept rattlesnakes, Mr. Carson. anyway, that started my fascination with reptiles and i've always been much more of a snake person than a lizard guy.

 

[Euphillia]

I've always just liked and wanted one. I used my 4 year old son as an excuse. I have honestly been telling him since he was born that the day I asked "What do you want for your birthday?" and he answered " I want a gecko", we were getting one. Needless to say for his 4th birthday last year he finally said it.

I have 2 currently and I do plan on adding a couple more. I really just love them.

 

[Thorgecko707]

Ron Tremper was my inspiration to start keeping geckos.

 

[Blazebabe]

My hubby's corn snake kicked me off into getting Leo's, went to the shop where he had the snake from and saw my first 2 leo's and now later down the line i've got Blaze.

 

[PaladinGirl]

My lizard/amphibian hobby started with me as a toddler, sitting in the middle of the living room floor naked, playing with a bunch of rubber lizards that I kept in a purse My mom took pictures to embarrass me with later.

When I was growing up, I had newts and salamanders that I adored. After I got married, my husband and I got a Russian tortoise. We had him for about 4 years and then gave him to a college girl with a passion for reptiles Our daughter was a little baby at the time and we felt he deserved someone who could give him more attention.

I've always liked leos, and when we turned our spare bedroom into a rec room in February, one of the walls was almost completely bare of furniture. I told my husband we needed to set up a tank and get a leopard gecko, because besides having the room, I'd always wanted one! I researched leos for probably a month. Then I set up a tank and the next day I found Toon at a Petco! So now my husband and I have some company at night while we're gaming at our computers Hands down best pet ever--quiet, clean, fairly low maintenance, friendly..I LOVE my leo and AFT! (set up a 2nd tank and bought the AFT a couple weeks ago hehe).

 

[LZRDGRL]

Well, my story started in January 2008 with a wonderful $400 fish tank. It was a tube tank, 38g, where the fish could swim from left to right. It was my second aquarium (I also have a huge 1 meter square tank). When it was delivered, it arrived broken. That is, the upper part was, but even if it couldn't hold water anymore, it could be used for other things. So instead of throwing it away (I didn't need to send it back when I got the replacement), I thought about what I could put in there. I did three months of research and thought about turtles first. But I read that turtles only eat their live food half and leave rotting bits of prey lying around, yuck!! So I looked into lizards (I always liked them, and have a lizard tattoo on my back). Finally, I decided I would take two leopard geckos. That was in April 2008, after I had learned about their care and housing. I got them personally from a man in a town nearby whom I met at a rest area between our two cities. They were Nikita (my avatar!) and Kira; a Tangerine Jungle Albino and a Tang. Here they are (sentimental ). Of COURSE it didn't stay with those two geckos!! Well, a few years down the road I got into breeding and founded my business in Illinois. Kira was sold at a reptile show, but Nikita is my mascot and will always stay with me. He has been to schools to teach little kids (and college kids) about herp maintenance, and he made many pretty babies. He's my tamest and most social gecko, although Lindy tries to steal his show lately

Chrissy

 

[bananaphone]

ive liked snakes as long as i can remember and any time i could i would hold them and try to scare my mom with them because she HATES snakes. had a random tree frog i found for a couple days when i was younger before it jumped out of the tank and off my second story balcony to its death. i actually came home and found it dead on the floor and my mom had no idea what had happened. then a while went by with nothing because my mom was never too keen on reptiles/frogs in general. then i randomly was given 3 frogs and their habitat with everything and kept those for a couple weeks before i got lazy caring for them and let mold/fungus grow in their tank and one died so i gave the other two to a local pet store, and that was about 6-7 years ago at least. THEN i had a dog that had to be put to sleep and that put me in a real tight bind and made me never want to get myself a dog again, but felt the need for a pet so i started researching different reptiles and eventually got a bearded dragon, had that for a couple months(going on 3.5 now) and now recently rescued two leo's from petco when they had a half off sale. plan on getting 2-3 more females and a male and have a little colony hopefully. if that doesnt work out ill have them separated but still have 4-5 females and 1 male total

 

[Franklinj480]

Jeff Corwin, Steve Irwin. Animal Planet. Discovery Wild.

I was basically raised by them. Started off catching anoles that hungout on my porch, boy did I terrorize them. Six year-old me was devastated when I caused one to drop its tail, I thought I killed him! That is how I learned about lizard tail autotomy. (and probably explains why I'm near phobic about making a herp do it now). I've always loved reptiles. I was such a strange kid, when I was in kindergarten I convinced my peers that I was turning into a lizard.

I kept anoles, beardies, and skinks growing up until we moved overseas.

Now that I'm out of the dorms and stateside I've started with a leo! I always wanted one but my parents had a strict limit to how many pets I could have. I'm not gonna lie. It's awesome to not be under that rule anymore!

 

[Golden Gate Geckos]

As a young child in Southern California in the 1950's, I loved to collect reptiles, amphibians, and even trap-door spiders. I had horned lizards (horny-toads) before they were endangered, a desert tortoise named Homer, as well as various garter snakes. I had frogs and polly-wogs, too. It was certainly NOT something girls did back then, so I got ribbed a lot.

In the early 1990's, one of my employees had a large collection of reptiles, and he invited me to go to a reptile show at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. I was hooked, and couldn't decide on a bearded dragon or a leopard gecko. (Obviously, leos won...) I picked up two small leopard geckos after doing as much research as I could without the internet, LOL!

Long story short, I bred my first pair in the spring of 1995, and the rest is history. (Then I became the Mean Old Gecko Lady).

 

[Franklinj480]

I had horned lizards (horny-toads) before they were endangered.

they're endangered!? so many live here in southern Arizona

 

[Herp Lover]

My animal obsession started with Steve Irwin. I wanted to be just like him when I was older. My dad had frogs and him, me and my sister all had aquariums. Then for Christmas my parents got me and my brother iguanas but two died so my dad gave the last one to a lady up the street that had two other iguanas. Then a friend gave us a RES that their son had neglected so it's shell was curved up because they did not let it go in water. After my dad gave it to someone who could take care of it right I just had fish, a dog, a cat and a hamster for a long time. When I was about 13 my sister had to get a rat for a school project and after a few weeks she stopped taking care of it and my mom put it's cage outside because it smelled so bad so I took it in and that started my rat obsession and I ended up having 16 rats over the next 5 years along with over 30 Budgies, Zebra Finches, Lovebirds that died when I had a really bad mold problem in my room, three hamsters, a rabbit, mice, frogs,a banded gecko & three snakes. After I got rid of the mold I felt depressed and empty inside because my birds were my life but I wanted something that did not have to have the run of my house like birds & rabbits because of my cats/dogs so when I saw a add for two free banded geckos on Craigslist I jumped on the chance and wound up coming home with the two banded geckos and a Leopard Gecko. Now I have a growing population of leopard geckos and am looking into frogs.

 

[M_surinamensis]

So now my husband and I have some company at night while we're gaming at our computers.

Little off topic here but connecting that line to the user-name, I suddenly find myself filling in all kinds of details about who you are, personality-wise. Assumptions mostly, so I'll be careful not to treat them as anything else. And none of them bad, so no need to get scared and bubblehearth.

Jeff Corwin, Steve Irwin. Animal Planet. Discovery Wild.

Perkins and Fowler, Attenborough, Cousteau. Every once in awhile Sagan would do an animal show. NOVA. PBS (especially WGBH, Boston).

they're endangered!? so many live here in southern Arizona

Some species. As with most taxonomy there's some degree of debate about the definitions and the number, especially with regards to the validity of subspecific definitions and if some should be regarded as full species... but there are at minimum, regardless of which taxonomy you happen to subscribe to, eight or ten species (or as many as about twenty according to some). Many of them are endangered or threatened. Some of them are stable, some of them are stable in some portions of their range but not others.

The usual suspects are indicated as causes, human encroachment, the use of pesticides and production of pollutants. Many of them also suffer because they have evolved such narrowly defined ecological relationships with their natural prey. Some of them are more opportunistic than others (there's some subspecific and locale specific deviance in the wider ranging species), some feed on a single species of ant and tend to die if not provided with the exact prey. Fire ant encroachment is consequentially listed as one of the primary reasons many of the southern species are facing problems, not only do the invasive ants out-compete and replace the native species, but the fire ants tend to also aggressively kill and consume the actual horned lizards (when they can swarm them) and their eggs (whenever they encounter them).



As to my interest in herps... I was lucky enough to have parents who were interested (though not quite to the degree I became), educated and in some very specific ways, indulgent. I never lacked things with which to learn. Books and museum trips, microscopes, chemistry sets and live animals were things that I was usually allowed to have... or earn, as I got a bit older. My mother was a teacher (who'd have guessed?) and my father was himself a pretty involved amateur naturalist and pet owner. Aquariums were really where it started for me, mostly because those where what my father was primarily interested in. We kept fish. There were a few herps too, but they were initially kind of secondary, usually field collected on fishing or camping trips. We kept common fish, we kept rare fish, we bred some fish... I just started to get more and more involved and more interested in biology. The more significant shift to herps was a kind of transition for me; I kept the aquariums, I kept some frogs, I kept some tree frogs, I got more interested in herps and branched out from there to all kinds of interesting things.

In a lot of ways, my approach to keeping herps (and other animals) as pets still very much reflects those amazing times with my parents, full of explanations and trivia, talking about unique behaviors and interesting adaptations, the way animals are connected to their environment and the way people should treat them. I came to find out when I was older that my father's interest would have been restricted to a fish tank or two and that my mother would sometimes read books just so that she'd be able to answer my more technical questions; their interest was casual, until my interest became something more. There are no words or gestures sufficient to thank them for that. Their parenting allowed me to develop what turned out to be a pretty serious lifelong passion, fueled my education and left me with... well, all the good and shiny things about the way I treat knowledge.

My um... sometimes less than pleasant attitude is something I developed all on my own, a little later in life.

 

[fl_orchidslave]

Marcia, I too fell in love with cute little horny toads as a child living out west. They hold a fond memory and I've been fascinated with them since. James, you are fortunate to live in an area that Phrynosoma are still flourishing. This is not the case in many regions they were once plentiful, which is why there are now laws to protect them in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Oklahoma.

Some species. As with most taxonomy there's some degree of debate about the definitions and the number, especially with regards to the validity of subspecific definitions and if some should be regarded as full species... but there are at minimum, regardless of which taxonomy you happen to subscribe to, eight or ten species (or as many as about twenty according to some). Many of them are endangered or threatened. Some of them are stable, some of them are stable in some portions of their range but not others.

The usual suspects are indicated as causes, human encroachment, the use of pesticides and production of pollutants. Many of them also suffer because they have evolved such narrowly defined ecological relationships with their natural prey. Some of them are more opportunistic than others (there's some subspecific and locale specific deviance in the wider ranging species), some feed on a single species of ant and tend to die if not provided with the exact prey. Fire ant encroachment is consequentially listed as one of the primary reasons many of the southern species are facing problems, not only do the invasive ants out-compete and replace the native species, but the fire ants tend to also aggressively kill and consume the actual horned lizards (when they can swarm them) and their eggs (whenever they encounter them).

Excellent explanation, Seamus. Fire ants take over and destroy harvester ant colonies, thus killing off the horned lizard primary food source. They have a natural immunity to the sting of harvester ants, but not fire ants. While the "usual suspects" have greatly devastated much of their natural range, the pet trade has not helped in captive populations. Many wild caught Phrynosoma turn up for sale at reptile shows and a few online classifieds, along with the wrong care information, only to be doomed to death. It's very sad. I'm glad there are now laws to protect them, and hopefully more in the not too distant future before it's too late.

 

[tlbowling]

LOL! The Mean Old Gecko Lady cracks me up! That is great!

 

[M_surinamensis]

Many wild caught Phrynosoma turn up for sale at reptile shows and a few online classifieds, along with the wrong care information, only to be doomed to death. It's very sad.

It really is very sad, I have a lot of fond memories of finding horned lizards as a child (and an adult) during the times when I lived in Arizona and Colorado.* Never collected any of them; I have no objections to legal and responsible field collection, but Phrynosoma are difficult to collect responsibly. Partially due to the somewhat extreme thermal gradient and UV required for an enclosure, mostly due to that whole "can eat two or three hundred ants a day as adults" thing.

They are such cool animals though, the blood shooting defensive mechanism (not something I have witnessed all that often, probably because even as a child I tried not to stress and harass animals while herpin'), the degree of specialization they show in their ecological niches, the morphology of the species and subspecies... and when I get right down to it, there's something awesome about a tiny, pointed, squat, solid little lizard that's standing next to an ant hill with the tongue flicking in and out over and over. Plus, when you're four years old, even if you're aware it's not a descendant, they kind of look like tiny ankylosaurus and that is simply awesome.

They aren't impossible to keep healthy in captivity, but it's enough of a hassle, enough of an expense and enough of a pain in the butt trying to manipulate heat and light to be exactly what it should be that I'd bet most people who own them don't get it right. I did see them in a Southern California petstore once, I was not pleased by it. I love watching them and I've never seen one in the wild without smiling, but I don't think I'd want to keep them, myself. Not outside of a "they no longer exist in the wild, volunteers are needed to maintain carefully monitored lines" situation, anyway.

*I moved... a few times... as a kid and sometimes wander as an adult. I was actually born in Phoenix, but always return to the Boston area, so Taxachussetts is home.

 

[Franklinj480]

Little off topic here but connecting that line to the user-name, I suddenly find myself filling in all kinds of details about who you are, personality-wise. Assumptions mostly, so I'll be careful not to treat them as anything else. And none of them bad, so no need to get scared and bubblehearth.

Its good to know I'm not the only one who made the connection.

Back to topic (sort of) I never knew Sagan did wildlife documentaries! Were they on public media? Is there any chance you know of any links that would direct me to them?

 

[M_surinamensis]

Not exactly wildlife documentaries. Not in the same sense as most the guys on my list there, or yours... but he did touch on the origins of life, evolution and the interconnectedness of the natural world every so often. The one that comes most readily to my mind was an episode of Cosmos. Looking for an episode guide to get a title for the one I remember, google spit out Hulu as being a place to watch all thirteen episodes. http://www.hulu.com/cosmos It was Episode 2, "One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue" that I was remembering. I know he'd touch on some biology and naturalist topics from time to time in many of his shows though, supplying a human connection to some of the astrophysics was part of the reason he was such a genius at making those documentaries. He made the subjects matter on a more personal level for the viewer. "Billion, billion, billion."

Apparently they've also got fifty episodes of NOVA, can't go wrong there. Dawkins has also done a few documentary style shows, though his more recent ones tend to be a little more aggressive about his atheism.

I had been boycotting the site after the "Hulu is proud to support the efforts of..." message was for PETA, but they did send me an email about four months after my complaint letting me know that the support had been revoked upon review. So it should probably be okay now.

 

[Franklinj480]

Appreciate it! I'm a fanboy of Sagan through his books on the cosmos.

Looks like I've got something entertaining to do in between classes now, thanks.

I've always loved NOVA for the lack of commercials, I also like that they don't dumb the content down too much.