Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was just wondering how everyone got into keeping hots??

I guess I could say I have been chasing reptiles since I could walk. Snakes especially. I was lucky growing up because I have a dad who always encouraged me to have snakes as pets and learn how to properly take care of them. My mom was totally against me bringing snakes into the house so my dad would build cages for me and let me keep them in his garage. I can't tell you how many times I snuck snakes into the house only for them to escape and my mom would always be the one to find them after a couple of days. I mostly kept garter snakes and chicken snakes that I would catch on my grandparents farm. Well, as I got a little older, I was getting more interested in pythons and boas. After alot of begging and pleading I finally convinced my mom to let me have a ball python. I was in middle school so I didn't have alot of time for a job so my dad payed me to help him in his rodiron shop that he ran out of his garage as a second business. Well I finally saved up enough money to get my first ball python and everyhing I needed to take care of it. So now I'm gonna skip to my first hot snake. I had always been fascinated with copperheads but I had never thought of owning one as a pet until I met a gentleman by the name of phil who opened up a reptile petshop nearby. I spent all of my free time at his shop learning everything I could about snakes .he had a nice venomous collection. Mainly copperheads, timber rattlers, and a few cottonmouths. All of his hots were at his home in his snakeroom of course. By the time I was a freshman in high school, I had alot of valuable experience with hots and a nice collection of boas and pythons, chameleons, geckos and an iguana I've had for 5 yrs now. Well phil gave me my first cb juvenile copperhead and I have been hooked on hots ever since. We now own my grandparents farm and I go there every chance I get. when I'm not hunting with a gun for deer and other animals, I'm hunting with a snake hook and a camera. I am very thankful for my mentors. My dad and phil who took alot of time to teach me and help me with the knowledge and love for reptiles that I have. Now if I could just get my sister to let me give my nephews a snake..........
Link

-----
0.0.1 albino burmese
0.1.0 normal burmese
0.0.1 redtail boa
1.0.0 albino corn
1.1.0 leopard geckos
1.1.0 copperheads
1.0.0 green iguana
0.0.1 veiled chameleon
2.1.0 ball pythons
0.0.1 mexican red knee tarantula
0.0.1 emperor scorpion

I have yet to own any venomous, but like you, i grew up searching for all kinds of reptiles. Mainly snakes. Growing up in Fl and living near a river I encountered snakes like corals, pigmy's, black racers, gardners, etc, etc. I was supposed to get my first snake at the age of 9, i believe. I was hooked on red tails, and when i went to pick my beloved red tail up, the store owner told my mom that it would strangle my baby sister when it got older. I still hate that man to this day haha. Well i finally got my redtail 9 years later after beggin my mom to let me have one. Thats when the collecting all began. You guys should have seen my moms face when i brought home a 14 ft burm and turned my closet into a cage haha. But now onto the hots. Like i stated I have never owned any hots, mainly due to the law in Fl where you need to put in 1000 hrs of handling work and no less than one year. I think its a great law, I just never had the time. But what mainly attracts me to hots is their colors and patterns. Ever since I was little i dreamed of owning vipers, and still do. Looking into gettin a copper for my first hot, and then move on too some others like gaboons, eyelash pits, and rhinos. Maybe after a few years a albino monocled.

I have a feeling this will be a trend in the responses to this thread describing our entrance into this most unusual of hobbies, but I too spent my childhood with an obsessive fascination with snakes. I'd been around animals all my life, and was allowed to keep all kinds of unusual critters (ferrets, hedgehogs, and one iguana) but both my mom and dad were deathly afraid of snakes, so I could never keep them - to their knowledge. Maybe that had something to do with my fascination with them.

As soon as I entered college and lived on my own, I began keeping snakes and quickly, maybe too quickly, progressed to my first hot. For the past 6 years, I've kept a wide array of species, mostly elapids. Currently though, the only hot that resides in my collection is a little juvenile copperhead. Ironic.
-----
Chance Duncan
Science Teacher, Herp Enthusiast, and Reptilian Conservation Proponent
www.rvexotics.com

haha yes ironic indeed. Can't go wrong w/ a copperhead though.