I have never recommended a hognose for a beginner, although your experience with lizards should help. The problem is that hognoses typically go off feed at practically random times of the year. You have to be knowledgeable enough to be able to tell the difference between "winter lethargy" and disease. You also have to be very familiar with the numerous tricks it may take to get a hognose to eat again, most of them are not for the squeamish.



And as a side note, what makes hognoses so unique is their behavior. I think it would be better to start out with some of the other snakes so that later on down the road when you do get a hognose, you will appreciate them that much more.
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...the oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it."

Aldo Leopold (1938)



"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."

Calvin and Hobbes (Scientific Progress Goes 'Boink', 1991)

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