How'd you get your start?

[jerrymb]

About 6 weeks ago I took a ride with my landlord over to another house that he owns. The people who were renting the bottom floor took off without notice and left behind a leo. The lady who lives on the second floor took the leo but she didn't really want it. She had it for several weeks on the bottom shelf of a large bookshelf. No light. No UTH. No heat of any kind. This was in March and April. One hide and a filthy tank. The first time I saw her she asked me if I wanted a gecko and I said no. Then I was there about 2 weeks later and again she asked me and told me that if I didn't take it she would either let it loose outside or try and return it to the pet store. When I heard that I had no choice. I brought him home and started to order a bunch of stuff online for his tank. It took him a few weeks to fatten up and get used to everything. The rest is history.

 

[M_surinamensis]

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

If you end up going through the NOVA episodes there... all good of course... but I'd especially recommend an episode from season 33 titled "Lord of the Ants" It's posted there at the moment, not sure how they're handling the availability of episodes for the show. It's an episode about (and featuring) Edward O Wilson, a biologist who's books and theories I found particularly influential. He pretty well defined and evidenced the concept of sociobiology as it is understood today (he's done some amazing work in the fields of evolutionary biology studying biodiversity too) and that field is... eye opening. Learning about it and understanding it was really a kind of catalyst for me, fundamentally changing the way I thought about animal behavior and evolution.

 

[geckoluver4evr]

Wooooo! Go Steve Irwin and Jeff Corwin! I watched those guys all the time when I was younger, eating mac and cheese and watching Steve wrestle with gators or Jeff Corwin pretend to eat a giant palmetto bug (which was a very convincing trick). I'd go outside, and I'd catch green anole's and frogs, and I'd keep them in tubs and large critter keepers for a few days, before letting them go again. My brother is amazing at catching snakes. Steve Irwin showed him how to do it, and now my brother can catch any black racer he see's, if he wants too. Never had a pet reptile, but my other bro had a boa constrictor. It's name was squeezy, and he has since been donated to a reptile collector, who also teaches children. 2 weeks ago, the same brother got a baby bearded dragon, named Spike. Good pet-namer, huh? I loved Spike though! I was fascinated by him. So I read that females could be kept together, so we were going to try to go to the store to get a female. The babies were to young to sex, but my dad said I could get something else. Because he's awesome like that. I saw the leo's and fell in love, and now I have my tiny petco baby leo Pepper.

 

[PaladinGirl]

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.

Uh oh....people are catching on

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.

Hey, Seamus, you forgot to add "And now, I am going to get some leopard geckos because they are so cute and cuddly and I will be the best leo daddy ever, and they will love me!"....Sorry, I couldn't resist


All this talk about NOVA makes me want to watch some. A couple months ago I was watching some archaeological episodes. I'll have to check out some of their other stuff.

Oh, I forgot to add that Steve Irwin and Jeff Corwin made pretty big impressions on me as a teenager. When I was a nurse's aide in a nursing home, a resident was watching Animal Planet in his room one night and I paused to watch for a minute. Steve was chasing a big lizard around, I think it was a savannah monitor. It kept getting p.o.'d at him and at one point walked past him and smacked him with its tail. And Jeff had an episode one time where he was on some sort of beach or island and there were lizards everywhere (I think iguanas) and he was saying something funny about them. I can't remember what, but I know I laughed. Tried to find the episode on YouTube really quick but couldn't.

 

[Franklinj480]

Watched Lord of the Ants. Very cool. My girlfriend continues to think I'm the biggest dork ever.

 

[eyelids]

I got into reptiles by chance... Just as good of chance any 2-4 year old would have if they spent those years in southern Florida or any reptile friendly locale for that matter... It was inevitable that we [brother and I] would come across herps during our daily savagings... Our dad was also an avid outdoorsman so we'd go to The Everglades or Keys almost every weekend... In our backyard there was a canal in it which lived an alligator we affectionately named Harvey...I remember catching Marine Toads and throwing them into the canal for Harvey to 'eat'... We moved to Wisconsin in 1986 and there was no lack of herps to be found, albeit not in abundance like Florida, but enough to keep me entertained through the summers...

I got into leos in 1999-2000 Just as the first morphs were becoming available to the public... Who could forget Blizzardlizard.com and their $10,000 giveaway not to mention the killer white leo on the March 2000 Reptiles Magazine cover? Finally got a couple normal baby leos that Summer, but I wound up paralyzed a few months later and had to give them away... Fast forward to 2005 and I decided to pick up a pair of geckos to give it another shot...

In hindsight, I wish I knew about the forum at Kingsnake back in 1999 as I was on there regularly to look at breeder's pages... As I've learned over the years, it was where a lot of the 'old timers' got connected...

Edward O Wilson

:main_thumbsup:

P.s. http://www.diversityoflife.org/

 

[Russ S]

Watched Lord of the Ants. Very cool. My girlfriend continues to think I'm the biggest dork ever.

Apparently she just doesn't understand you....... LoL

 

[Golden Gate Geckos]

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

California is under siege with Argentine ants, which are killing off native species of ants (among other wildlife). Our horned lizards eat primarily ants, and their indigenous food supply is scarce now so they are dying off.

 

[artes]

When I was born, my parents owned 4 dogs, 5 cats, 8 fish tanks (5 saltwater), some birds, and guinea pigs. Dad always loved herps, but Mom was scared of them. Dad wanted to make sure I didn't suffer the same fate, so I could tell you how to spot visual differences between a venemous and non-venemous snake when I was 2 years old (barely walking, but I knew what snakes to pick up!). While I was growing up, we phased down to cats/dogs/freshwater fish, since we kept having to move randomly for Dad's job. We always would get houses with woods and a creek in the backyard though, so there was plenty of opportunity for snake/frog catching.

As a very young girl, I mostly stuck to garter/ribbon snakes for my catching pleasure. I still remember bringing Mom a ribbon snake when I was about 5, and her screaming at my father that the snake was going to eat me.

I eventually moved out and got married. Neither me nor my husband have any interest in having kids, so I started adopting animals. I really wanted to own fish again, but they're hard to move, so I decided on impulse to get some firebelly toads for one of my empty aquariums. I got online to search out information about how to care for them, and I learned what pacman frogs were, and just how adorable they are. I ended up getting a pacman frog not long later (and if you were curious, I also own 5 fish tanks with fish in them over 10 gallons - oops). Next came a White's Tree Frog I fell in love with, then three little green tree frogs, then came a companion for Froggie (my first white's tree).

I saw some photos of a friend's leopard geckos, and thought they were adorable. I ended up picking up an adorable one at Pet Co. Not long later, my Mom actually bought me a bearded dragon (that she LOVES), and I ended up with a blue tailed skink her cats tried to slaughter and nearly paralyzed. I still carried a love of snakes, but was not sure that I could handle feeding mice/rats to a pet, especially since I've had rats as pets for years.

But last week I fell in love with a little African house snake (that my husband is scared of). I fed him his first [frozen] mouse, and realized its not so bad. So now, I have a big happy zoo of herps, and I (and hubby) am a happy person.

 

[Gem]

My fella works away training with the army and only comes back home two days in every fortnight - he absolutely adores geckos but he can't keep animals on camp, and so I told him that if he got a pair I would keep them for him.

And so now I have Billy and Henry nestled up in the corner of my bedroom. 6 months old, cute as anything and they get on perfectly. I have fallen for the Leo bug completely and can't stop reading up on them!

So I have my fella to thank for my babies (okay, so they're both of ours but shhh. )

 

[M_surinamensis]

And so now I have Billy and Henry nestled up in the corner of my bedroom. 6 months old, cute as anything and they get on perfectly.

Both definitely male? That won't last.

 

[fl_orchidslave]

I wondered about that too........... unless Billy is a Billi.

 

[Gem]

Henry is a Henri.

 

[LeoMerlin]

This was an interesting thread so I figured why not? Well I've been around animals most of my life, either dogs, cats, horses etc. We even had birds when I was itty bitty but that didn't last long.

Okay:

5 horses + an extra one boarding with us, one dog (Black Belgian Sheepdog), three cats, and now my gecko. We used to have a hampster (however it's spelled) before it died but that's the current list.

We've had pet turtles in the past before, but that was the only reptile we've ever had. My sister found a baby red-eared slider at our old school. At the end of the year when no one else wanted it, we took it in for a good 13-15 years I think. She was a happy turtle too. We released her in a friend's pond. She enjoyed it, believe me. Before she was even put down, she was moving her legs like she was swimming... then she took off, lol.

Anywho, about a month ago Mom and I were on our way to church. There was a building nearby that said "Reptile Show". I was like "Hey Mom, we should definitely go." since she's afraid of snakes. I only meant it as a joke at first. She kind of laughed at that and we went on to church. Then during church they showed clips from Indiana Jones since the topic was facing your greatest fears and it was where Indi said "Why does it have to be snakes?" so of course we ended up going to the reptile show.

They had a contest going on and we entered it, not really thinking we'd win anything. Sure enough Mom's name got called and we won a habitat. Mom figured something needed to go into the habitat, so we picked out Merlin and she's let me be his keeper ever since. I've been doing tons of research on leopard geckos and I just get more fascinated by them every time I learn something new. Like today when I got to see him shed, that was so cool!