Reptile & Amphibian Forums

First of all I will not cross post this so if you know anyone that would like to participate please direct them here. I was well pretty board this morning and got to thinking “Why do I do what I do?” Well actually this question was a lot harder to answer than I thought. I really don’t know why I do what I do. I know I work to help better educate the uneducated but hey there are all ready people that get paid to do that so that’s not to important. To be honest I cant even say why I like Herps but that I just do. I know a big reason I have been interested in breeding as of late is traveling all over the west coast is not cheep and I hope to offset some of the expenses with the sale of some exotic Herps. Will it work? I have no clue. Is it worth it? Absolutely. If not offset any cost all I am doing at the very least is furthering my education. So here it is. Why do you do what you do with Herps? Why do you collect them, breed them, research them? Where dose your passion come from? This thread has been named the “Why do you do what you do supper thread” It is named this because I believe it will generate a lot of responses but if not then just ignore the supper thread part LOL

I know kind of why I like herps so much, my farthest back memory has to deal with me and my grandfather cathing frogs and me grabbing onto a harmless northern watersnake, but to everyone then including me, I was about 6 or so it was a deadly water moccasin. then there is the reason I enjoy working with Eastern milksnakes (lamprpopeltis t trianglum) was that when I was younger, I used to kill all of the milks I saw. my father told me they were all spotted adders, as I grew up I decided to learn all the native species here in NY and realized there were no water moccasins or spotted adders. I think that has to do with my passion for all herptofauna great and small
wayne

I am pretty new so I can remember why I satrted anyway. I HATE MYTHS! I have been teaching for 10 yrs and I am blown away by the rediculous things that people will believe and subsequently fear. I started trying to research everything I feared and I quickliy realized that most of people's fear stems from misinformation. Naturally snakes fall into this arena, and as I learned more about them, I liked them more.

As I started to look for snakes I became very frustrated with how hard they were to find, so I became obsessed with becoming proficient at finding them. I would love to get to the point where if I found myself in a snake friendly environment with students around I could have a good chance of finding one.

As of right now I have found 5 snakes with students around and each time has been incredibly rewarding. I feel like they learn a years worth of "mythbusting" in 5 minutes. For me it is much more about the life lessons than the science.

Jake

asasasgb