BILLINGS GAZETTE (Montana) 10 July 08 Mom, daughter raise, sell snakes and more (Luella N. Brien)
Karen Goralczyk and her daughter, Kristen, have a home full of reptiles - and that's the way they like it.
Their love for reptiles started five years ago when they bought a baby boa constrictor at a reptile show.
They got him a friend.
Then they acquired some misfits who needed a good home. Pretty soon the Goralczyks had a 6-foot iguana living in their house along with many snakes and a tortoise.
More reptiles came in, and the two decided to give them a bedroom.
The mother-daughter team keeps the reptile room hot and humid - that's the way the reptiles like it.
The relationship between women and reptile requires trust and understanding.
"We respect the animals, and we know what they are capable of," Karen said. "You have to always respect them. Any animal can bite - dogs, cats, alligators."
"Whenever we do anything with them, there are two of us," Kristen said.
The two went from reptile owners to reptile breeders a few years ago, and last summer they sold off the majority of their first batch of baby snakes.
On the way home, their car broke down, and they had to call a tow truck.
"I was sitting there in the middle, and the driver asked what was in the box," Kristen said. "I told him it was full of snakes."
The driver didn't believe Kristen at first. He quickly figured out she wasn't kidding.
"We scared him," she said.
Reptiles make great starter pets, Karen said.
You don't have to feed them every day, they are relatively clean and they don't take up a lot of space - that is if you don't decided to house an alligator.
The Goralczyks came across a gator at a reptile show.
The vendors sitting in the booth next to them wanted to run some errands and asked Kristen to watch the baby.
Karen came back to the booth, and her teenage daughter was sitting there, big smile on her face, saying, "Please, can we keep her?"
The two found out later that the gator needed a home because her vendor couldn't take her back to Arizona, where state law prohibits pet gators.
Gurt went home with the Goralczyks, and, in a few years, she will be full-sized, nearly 6 feet from nose to tail.
The back yard is slowly but surely turning into a gator habitat, and the Goralczyks are eventually going to find Gurt a friend.
The trick to breeding good reptile pets is to get them as used to human contact as possible.
"We make sure the people who want to buy a reptile from us do plenty of research before they buy it," Kristen said.
When they attend reptiles shows, the two take full-size snakes to show their customers exactly how big they will get.
Karen said she wants to make sure the would-be owners know exactly what they are getting into.
"It feels a lot better when you send them to well-prepared homes," Karen said.
The lizards are generally fed vegetables and the occasional bug. The snakes eat dead rodents.
Kristen said she they feed the snakes dead rodents because they want the animals to be accustomed to eating food that doesn't move.
"The UPS guy thinks we're crazy," Karen said.
Every few weeks, they receive a frozen shipment of rodents.
The boxes, Kristen said, have the phrase "Frozen Mice" printed in big bold letters on the sides.
The Goralczyks enjoy giving presentations about reptiles to classrooms.
"The teachers are always more afraid than the students," Karen said.
The reptiles have even helped Kristen's grades.
She had a presentation on Spanish-speaking countries in her Spanish language class.
She took a few snakes in class to show which ones live in which countries.
The hobby-turned-business has given the younger Goralczyk a path toward her future.
Kristen, who'll be a senior at Shepherd High, plans to majoring in herpetology. She wants to focus on genetics in reptiles.
"She'll be off at college, and I'll be the crazy snake lady," Karen said, laughing.
Mom, daughter raise, sell snakes and more