# What started you on reptiles



## chelvis (Feb 19, 2012)

I love reptile cleaning day. Today I was getting to an old 20 gallon I had taken out of storage. I don't know why I store this old tank, its got to be over 10 years old, I remember getting it as my first "large tank". It once housed three female leo geckos. 

Cleaning this cage brought back so many memories, including what I consider was My first reptile. Family wise we had turtles but my dad took care of them. My first real reptile was a small Central American Banded gecko. This is what started me on the path as a reptile hobbiest. I got Tiger and wanted to get her a mate, which had me searching reptile mags and funas paper list until I found out about reptile shows. With in three year I was producing CA geckos each year and I was also becoming big locally for leo geckos. Now I got into larger lizards but I still have the itch to get back into banded geckos.

Its funny to think that a small gecko kicked all this off. That old tank I keep with me housed some of my first hatchlings and now I think it might help restart my gecko collection.

Well sorry about the walk down memory lane, I was just wondering what kicked off everyone else's collection.


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## Rhetoric (Feb 19, 2012)

As a kid we had the Oregon reptile man come to our schools and daycares. He seemed so full of knowledge and had nothing but respect for the animals. My favorites were always the blue tongued skink and the albino burmese. I remember he also had a snapping turtle and a king cobra.
Every time he came to our school I'd go home and tell my mom all about it. She never let me have any reptiles, she doesn't do snakes and she thought lizards were too smelly and the lights were too expensive. She let me get a rat, which ended up being pregnant... lol.
I'd go visit my grand parents in central OR and catch the garter snakes and frogs, my grandma would FLIP hahaha. 

When I graduated high school I moved out with my boyfriend. He got me a beardie when I turned 18. Shortly after it turned into tegus.


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## laurarfl (Feb 19, 2012)

Well, it started almost 40yrs ago when I spent hours catching snakes, anoles, toads, and tadpoles and hiding them under my bed in shoe boxes.  In elementary school, I would sit in front of the non-fiction shelf of my choice and read, read, read on library days. And every time we went to the beach, I would get so disappointed because my mom wouldn't take me to St Augustine Alligator Farm. I didn't get a serious reptile pet of my own until I snuck a sav into my dorm room at U of FL. Then my daughters fell in love with Steve Irwin. Then THEY started collecting, too.


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## chelvis (Feb 19, 2012)

I forgot about the field herping as a kid. My teachers use to check my pockets every time I came into the class room. You let in one snake and a lizard and your labeled for life.


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## JohnMatthew (Feb 19, 2012)

I must have inherited the love from my dad who has been keeping reptiles since he was a kid. I consider myself lucky to have such understanding folks who encouraged my fascination from an early age and who quickly learned to keep a clean set of clothes in the old station wagon as it was almost a certainty that I would find water(and of course, mud) wherever the family was that day. Thinking back on my childhood, I bet I flipped near half the stones and logs in Florida growing up and made diving grabs in so many waterholes. Swimming underwater to a log full of basking turtles was always one of my favorites, almost a guaranteed catch as they'd normally stay on the log until I broke surface by which time they were falling into my hands! I'm more of a nature observer these days, mostly content to just view the animals in their natural settings without disturbing them, though I still do turn over the occasional log..


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## roastedspleen (Feb 20, 2012)

i remember a long time ago when i was four my mom used to take me to this bird rescue. but they also had a large boa that i was fascinated by. im sure it was a common one but my memory is a little fuzzy. but since then i always wanted a reptile


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## monstruo-the-tegu (Feb 20, 2012)

8 years ago i was 5 and i would always be cathcing things one day i came home from school and my parents had gotten me a baby albino corn snake and i had for about a year and it would always be getting out it ended up being 9 times we lost it and one day i just couldnt find my corn and thats what got me started


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## Compnerd7 (Feb 20, 2012)

My earliest memory of this is when I was 4 years old I wanted to grow up and be an " entomologist " ( a pretty big word for a 4 year old, it would turn a lot of heads lol ) I collected all sorts of insects along with lizards ect... My first real pet was an alligator lizard I caught when I was 4. After that I got a Red Sided Garter snake when I was 5, a Rough green snake also when I was 5, and a pair of Whites Tree Frogs when I was 6... 

I think it has just always been in my blood, I have always had a passion for the Earth, and all living creatures on it.


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## chelvis (Feb 20, 2012)

Ya i remember getting some weird looks when I said I wanted to be a herpatologist back in middle school.


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## Compnerd7 (Feb 20, 2012)

chelvis said:


> Ya i remember getting some weird looks when I said I wanted to be a herpatologist back in middle school.



I still get weird looks when I say I want to go back to college to be a herpetologist haha


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## Draco D Tegu (Feb 21, 2012)

Mine started with a little ol' CWD in a pet shop. It's been going non stop for about 7 years now.


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## BillieJeAn (Feb 21, 2012)

Mine started with my 5th grade librarian who had a ton of geckos
I then bought a leopard gecko when I was 11 and then I was hooked lol

also- Steve Irwin! I watched his show for as long as I can remember. I never missed an episode


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