When I was a kid my brother had a snake, whom I liked, but that was the last snake experience of my life until I moved to Arizona to teach high school. Then one day I look down and there crawling on the floor of my classroom is a worm-sized snake. I took it home, learned what it ate, and kept it. Of course I learned all about it here on Kingsnake.com... and then I got to reading all the forums, and now I have many snakes! 
(1.2 corn snakes; 2.2 cal kings; 1.1 blotched kings 0.1 cb arizona mountain kings; 1.0 Rosy Boas; and 0.0.7 ground snakes).
After that first one I was given another one later in the school year by my students. That one refused to eat and I returned it to the wild. Almost a year and a half after I got the original one (first mis-identified as a Tantilla, so that is it's name), one day one of my students brought me an adult orange stripe. They'd found it wrapped in tape in the library, and it had obviously been slammed in a door at some time, had several severe kinks. I wasn't sure it would live, but I planned on bringing it home anyway. Later on that same day another of my students brought me another adult orange stripe, this one very healthy. So I planned to bring that one home also (Named the kinked one Kinkee, and the other one Lightning).
The next week another of my students brought me another juvenile the same size and coloration as my original ground snake. I named it Tantillas (since I wouldn't be able to tell it apart from the other one). At this point i had the two large ones in a ten gallon, the two small ones in a large critter keeper. Then my husband (also a teacher at the same school) had one of his students bring him a solid red one (She named it Mable, but I thought it was a male, so we renamed it Maple). At this point, with five of them, we decided to see if hte big ones would co-exist with the little ones in a 15 gallon, or if they would try to eat the smaller ones. They seemed to get along fine, preferring crickets to one another.
I had a friend who did a lot of herping in northern Arizona where they came in the banded phaze, and I suggested, if he didn't mind, picking me up some while he was out. He did, and I got them from him earlier this week. One is slightly larger than the other, so I named them Kit & Kaboodle.
They aren't as showy as the other snakes, but they are fun to watch chasing crickets around their cage, curled up in a multi-colored ball under cork bark, and other various and sundry fun things. They are really neat snakes, and worth a lot to me in small ways. For one thing they seem to think that the school campus is a safe place, and by my love-affair with snakes, I've been teaching both the maintenance crew and the students that they shouldn't be killed, but should be left alone, or if they are in a class, and in imminent danger, the students can give them to me.
I plan on putting a small container with some damp vermiculite in the cage in case any of them are female and planning on laying eggs.
Anyway, I'm rambling.
To keep this "OT" .... hubby was out on the piece of property we MAY be buying... saw a huge ol Desert Iguana. Too bad I wasn't there to take pics! Maybe next time
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~Sasheena
Kit, Kaboodle, Tantilla, Tantillas, Lightning, Kinkee, Maple, Licorice, Castle, Bishop, Queenie, Jester, Pandora, Phantom, Aphrodite, Athena, Hermes, and Lady
