Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Just curious to know what inspired everyone to start working with these fabulous animals?

K
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"Remember the days of the old schoolyard?" - Cat Stevens

The first time I saw the January issue on bloods in the Reptiles mag, I knew that was the snake I wanted.Then finding out their sizes made it even better,not too big not too small.So I sold the balls and now I just love my bloods.Nothing could be better than a blood python.

I met my first blood -82 when I started "highschool". A big red one with a BAD temper... But she was so impressive.
Bought my first blood -96 (she was hatched -95). My second -99 as a male but it showed to be a famale so I started to look around again and find nothing. Now I have find a red male, hatched this years and I have another orange male, hatched -00 on the way.

Its the only thing that i know of thats gets credit for being short and fat!!!!

There is nothing like tame adult blood threre so vocal its cool.

That and the black blood you guys have if you still do it looks like a truck tire in a rack.

Joe Ferreira.

Hey K,
For me it was back in 1975 or 76. I use to look up Pet shops in the phone books that listed reptiles as part of the type of animals that they sold, so I made it my business to only check out those pet stores. I made a long trip for me back then as a 15 or 16 year enthusiastic and not to mention curious teen, to the upper east side, from East New York Brooklyn; I think it was 76 street there about. The place was called "Small World", and they were the ones credited with giving me my first introduction to bloods. They had what I realize now is one of the first home spun rack systems ever made (the precursor to the rack system), by using an old dresser and converting it for babies and juveniles. When I first slid opened one of those drawers - I got my first glimpse of a fat little baby blood or two in the same drawer space. Wow! I can hardly believe my eyes when I first saw those fat little guys; I just new then that I was going to be working with these sooner or later. Now it is an obsession. LOL!!

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In the theater of my life, this pickle has no goal!!

The New York pet shop you mention, Small World, was owned and operated by Philippe de Vosjoli, who went on to become one of herpetoculture's most important writers by writing, editing, and publishing the Herpetocultural Library by Advanced Vivarium Systems.

Hey Dave,
What were the odds of that! that some day that shop owner would be the person he is today - credited with so many contributions to herpetoculture. I guess I now have bragging rights for being introduced to bloods by none other then Philip DeVosjoli him self. How great is that. While on that note, Dave, do you remember another great little reptile shop on 14 street and eight ave, called "Fang And Claw"? The proprietor Aldo, too, I credit with teaching and mentoring me during those early years in the 70's, when so much of the herps that are so common today, were not as accesible as they are today; with swap meets and the internet providing another medium and mode of access to great breeders such as your self (VPI) and so many others, Nerd, Greg Maxwell of Fine GTP's, Etc.

At any rate, thanks for the response and that great piece of anectode.
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In the theater of my life, this pickle has no goal!!

Thanks for bringing up such a fun topic kara

I too first got interested in Bloods when i saw the january issue of Reptiles magazine. Up until i purchased my first blood I had only been dealing with colubrids. I wanted to work with an animal that was more challenging, and bigger After my first blood, what can i say, i was hooked. I can't realistically work with the monster sized snakes (retics, burms) so the bloods provide a happy medium. I also like having a snake that i can just 'chill' with. Watchin a movie, somethin to drink, blood curled up in your lap; life doesn't get much cooler

carole

Ah, remembering my first love

Actually, it was two particular situations that come to mind. The first was in 1993-1994 when a friend acquired a wild caught juvenile to sell at this shop. It was fantastic and relatively docile. I later had him get me "a blood" and he received a borneo. I didn't realize the color variations so was shocked with the dark brown color, but bought it anyway.

The real clincher for me was while I was attending a educational show through the Chicago Herp Society and a member had a beautiful adult red blood python on display with some of her hatchlings. It just amazed me the way they looked, the proportions and the color! I inquired and I bought one from her.

Later that year, I was called into help a family whose patriarch died leaving them with several snakes of which one was a borneo. The snowball began rolling and to this day, they are my favorite species to work with.

The Barker's January 1996 article "Big Red" got me interested in bloods to begin with but I percieved them to be nasty..."large corpulent animals that would bite or defecate" was how they put it I think. Everything that I read after that reinforced my misinformation. It was only at a local show that I saw someone with a large blood that was calmly hanging out with it's owner that I thought I'd give them a second thought. This year I picked up my first, a female Sumatran, that is a pleasure to handle and my new favorite snake. Next I'll be looking to acquire a black short tail. Oddly enough i haven't seen them advertised? Anyone have a breeder site that sells them?

Bryan

Saw pictures of them on a friends website, looked up how to care for them, and was assured I could manage one. Next thing my friend put my name forward for a rehome Borneo, and thats how I got my first, altho I would happily have bought one anyway
Iv only got BillyBob just now as I keep Royals (10) but would love to add a lady friend some time in the future)
Iv found Billybob to be a little hissy and nippy (altho never actually bittne me), but he is still young, only 6mths old, so Im hoping he`ll calm down as he gets older.
Denise

I have had a wide variety of colubrids and a couple columbian boas for many years and had bought in to the bloods are demons rhetoric.
for the last few years I have only had 1 cal king but is has been pretty unhandleable. This summer my daughter was old enough to take an
interest in it but it was too wild and thrashed and bit and musked and so on. I wanted to get something more mellow and "slow." My first
thought of course was a corn but they are so plain. I wanted a heavy bodied boid that didn't move very fast but I made a pledge to stay
away from big snakes after I got rid of my last boa. I looked into balls and rainbow boas. Then I came across a borneo at a shop and was very impressed.
It wasn't at all defensive and I loved the body size. I waited too long and someone else jumped on it. I started reading all the posts on here
and all the care sheets I could find. The thing that intrigued me most was those of you that describe sitting in front of the tv with
a snake in your lap for hours at a time. My cal king is always on the go and always trying to get away.
Then in Sept I was at a small show and had reserved a ball python and was making that one last pass through the exhibits and saw a female
borneo yearling I had missed on the first pass. I held it long enough to see it was handleable and without obvious wounds or parasites
and said I'll take, no bartering or offer/counter offer, I threw my money down and headed out. Since then she has never passed on a meal
and has shed and pooped and has filled out noticably as she was a little thin and wrinkled. The first two weeks she'd let out a short hiss
on being picked up but since then no signs of denfense at all. Now I need to find her a boyfriend and I would now like to get a pair of reds
as well. I have my cal in hibernation at the moment but if I get a chance to trade her off for another blood I won't blink an eye. I wish someone
would put out a book on bloods like all the books on corns, kings and boas. I think if the truth about them became more well known they would be
one of the most popular snakes in the trade but I bet I'm preaching to the choir here. Oh yeah, and she will sit in my lap all curled up without
moving for long periods of time. Not many colubrids will do that.

I have long been of the opinion that there are two basic kinds of snakes and two basic kinds of keepers--those who are attracted to long skinny snakes and others who are attracted to short fat snakes. Of course, there can be some overlap of interests, there's nothing unusual, for example, about a short-fat-snake keeper who also has corn snakes or indigos, but still, I think that keeper will have some underlying stronger attraction to one of the two types

Personally I am a short fat snake kind of a keeper. My life has been full of great short fat snakes. I've always been attracted to ball pythons, sandboas, gaboon vipers, puff adders, many rattlesnakes, montane Trimeresurus and also the heavy neotropical pitvipers like jumping vipers. Heck, I've always been fascinated by elephant trunk snakes. Any of the heavy-bodied large constrictors like boa constrictors and Burmese have a great allure to me.

Of course, early on I became interested in the blood python. Back then, 30 years ago and more, the short-tailed pythons were unknown. For that matter, in my experience, tame blood pythons were unknown. But a keeper willing to keep Gaboon vipers isn't going to be dissuaded by a harmless snake that bites.

I kept bloods all through the 70's, but then didn't have any in the 80's until Indonesia opened up in 1988 and many snake species previously unseen in captivity began to trickle into the market. Tracy and I jumped on those blood pythons and the new short-tailed pythons immediately. I think we bought just about all of the animals that came in the first year (we're not talking many snakes here, it started as a trickle, and most keepers ignored them) and we have continued to this day keeping a huge bunch of them. We had the first Sumatran short-tail in the country and we were the first to breed both Borneos and Sumatrans.

And the red bloods that were coming out of Sumatra were unlike anything we had ever seen! Gorgeous and tame, and with great variation in color and pattern, all things that make for a great species to work with.

Then, miracle of miracle, babies began to come into the market. In the 1960s until the late 80s or early 1990s, imported babies were very rare, nearly impossible to acquire. There were some pioneer breeders of blood pythons that occasionally produced bloods in the 1980s (David Lawrence, Tom Weidner, and Dick Goergen) but basically big unpleasant adult Malaysian blood exported from Bangkok were all we short-fat-snake-keepers had.

Anyway, early on Tracy and I totally fell in love with blood pythons and short-tailed pythons. We strongly felt that they are the perfect snake for many people, at least the keepers with a short-fat-snake tendency. They are tame, they are a legal size for most municipal regulations, they are wonderfully big fat snakes, you don't get a hernia cleaning their cages, they don't present any danger to you, your neighbor, or your neighbor's dog. Blood pythons can be wonderfully interactive and personable snakes. If you like red snakes (and why not) why get a puny skinny little milksnake when you can have a 20 pound brilliant red blood python.

Anyway--I love them and it's been a long affair. And I'm blessed to have a beautiful wife who loves them even more than I do.

Awesome story Dave!! - Angel
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In the theater of my life, this pickle has no goal!!