Well I've always loved animals of all kinds. Right now I'm a marine biology major at UC Santa Cruz and I plan on doing this for a living one day. But my interest in reptiles didn't really take off until I was 15. When I was 4 years old my favorite animals were dolphins and lions and tigers and especially DINOSAURS. I liked snakes and lizards but I wasn't super interested in them, cause I never saw any near my house.



I remember my first snake encounter, when I was camping with my cub scout troop in New Jersey, I found a big garter snake. I thought it was the coolest thing I ever saw, but some other idiot yelled "SNAKE!" and beat it to death with his hiking stick. I was so pissed, I was like "why'd you do that? it's just a garden snake" and he was like "What if it was a cobra???" and I was like "you idiot those don't live in America."



That snake prompted me to buy a field guide to reptiles, which I studied thoroughly. My mom wouldn't let me buy a snake so when I was 8 or 9 years old, I got an anole. The guys at the pet store gave pretty bad advice on how to take care of it, and so my mom hated it and made me give it away. No one wanted it so I released it in my front yard. I'm sure it didn't last long in the winters of NJ.



And so my herp interest kinda waned for a while, until I was 15 and started watching Crocodile Hunter. And I thought that was the coolest thing ever, that snakes could be considered friendly and beautiful, and how he handled venemous snakes with skill. And when my friend bought an anole, I watched it bask in its cage and eat crickets, and I was determined to get a reptile of my own. But my mom wouldn't let me get a lizard (she remembered that anole) so I got a Russian tortoise instead. I took very good care of it so later that year I got my baby bearded dragon, which I successfully raised to adulthood. By now I was reading tons of info about herps and was amassing quite the knowledge of them.



When I went to college, I couldn't take my lizard and tortoise with me, so my interest kinda leveled off for a bit. Until I went to Mexico, went searching for snakes, and found my first rattlesnakes. Red Diamond rattlers. This totally put me back into the reptile craze and I bought an albino black rat snake. My friends have asked me, "Why do you like snakes so much?" and I couldn't think of a good answer. I guess it's the way they look, feel, and go about their daily lives. The way a snake blends in perfectly with its background, gliding gracefully through the harsh desert vegetation in search of its prey, is just fascinating to me. Their colors and patterns are incredibly beautiful.



Unfortunately, this year my tortoise got a respirtory infection during hibernation and died shortly thereafter. So now I have my beardie, my rat snake, and my brother's leopard gecko. I'm also hiking in the woods and deserts catching reptiles whenever I can, photographing them, and letting go. I'm reading about them all the time and learning as I take care of mine and observe them in nature. I'm going to keep my collection very small for now, since I'm 19 and living in college. I live a mobile life, and I don't want to take on the responsibility of lots of herps. If I go away, I need to have my friends take care of them for me until I go back. I'll be going to Australia for biology research for 6 months next year and I can't take my pets with me. But hopefully in the future I'll be a herpetologist/zoologist/marine biologist and have a little snake breeding project on the side.



Sorry for the long story but I've always wanted to write this anyway. Hope someone reads it...

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