HOW and WHY

[Scaley.Jade]

Right guys how did you get started on garters on why have you stuck with them.

im not really sure how i found this forum but i know its definatly james fault that i now have 4 garters lol
reason i have stuck with them is i find them really interesting there alot more active than my corn which i also love

[guidofatherof5]

My mother introduced me to Garters when I was around 7 years old. Since then, they have been in and out of my life. I find them interesting to watch and overall easy to take care of. They are curious and seem to like interaction. They(Radix) seem to lose any fear the more you handle them.

Now, with 5 children of my own I want my kids to grow up without a fear of snakes and also a respect for these little creatures that live amoungst us. I know it's not proven(or maybe it is) but I think they have more going on then eat, drink, poop, breed.

I'm so thankful for Thamnophis.com and the other members of the forum. It's nice to be around people who feel the same way about the little scrubs.

[olive oil]

Ethan,my son,caught a little eastern baby in the back yard and we kept it.
I then turned to the computer to learn how to take care of her and found this wonderful forum. I didn't even know anything about forums and now I'm addicted to it and snakes. :)

[reptile3]

Aundrea....

her boyfriends- son caught a snake, thought it was a garter. She joined this site & found that her snake was a brown dekayi. She would have me look at the pics on the site here. I immediately fell in love!!! So I joined this awesome forum.Since I already had a BP, & other reptiles... I just had to have myself some garters/dekayi's. Thanking Kyle,Wayne, & Shannon... for my lovely snakes.

And then I got into Kyle's Bugs... peppered roaches, I think they are sooo cool!:)

Ever since I became a member of this forum, I have meet some really awesome ppl(online) *in July more* great place to come to, share experiences, fun & lots of laughter!!!

[count dewclaw]

I've always been interested in animals of all sorts. Growing up in So. Calif. my family would sometimes picnic in the hills (springtime usually), once I found a young garter, but my parents wouldn't let me keep it. Skip ahead a "few" years, I now have kids and live in an old farmhouse. One spring we noticed a bunch of garters emerging from an old, no longer used, shallow (12 ft. deep) well, we collected a few to watch for awhile. They made a few appearances at preschool for show-and-tell (other moms thought I was nuts!). We let them go, but I was hooked...I still enjoy watching the wild ones emerge every spring and congregate again every fall. Now I have my own that I keep, and I'm looking forward to expanding my "collection".

I found this forum by "googling" to find more information on garter snakes...

[infernalis]

A similar topic of discussion we had once before..

http://www.thamnophis.com/forum/garter-snake-lounge/3484-epiphany-awakenings.html

[bkhuff1s]

Well I was originally afflicted with chondro fever, but I saw pugets in kingsnakes classifieds and had to have them. I belive it was dekay that brought me here after seeing the error of my ways. ;)

[Snake lover 3-25]

i have been attracted to reptiles ever since i was young and when i moved into my house 6 yrs ago i would go exploring in the woods and i would find snakes.... i was brave back then and so i'd catch them and bring them up the hill to show mom.... she didn't like that very much lol.....

one day i found a snake unlike all the rest... a brown snake..... i asked my dad if i could keep him... i already had a large kritter keeper and he wasn't so big.... and to my surprise he said yes.... i then took him every where.... to my friends, my grand parents and even on walks with my dogs.... he was my constant companion and i loved him.... he escaped many times from his cage but i always found him wether it was an hour or a week later.... but then one day he escaped and i never found him.....:(

i then continued to find snakes and keep them and feed them and research them..... i got really into them and my parents let me get 2 corn snakes.... bad experience.... didn't end well...(RIP norman and sally and holly too:()

so about a full year after i lost my last corn on june 7 2006 i was down walking with my aunt, my dad, and my mom.... and i didn't know snakes were out yet i usually just found them in the spring and the fall... and my aunt screams and down at my feet is this HUGE garter biggest i had ever seen and so i of course picked it up a little too far down the neck and she bit me and we all stood there for a while my mom screaming at me to let it go or get it off or throw it or something along those lines and i of course said no way lol she was the coolest snake ever and a great find so finally i just pulled her off and i put her in solitary confinement for a day or so bc i was very angry with her for biting me

the next day i tried to feed her a pinky left over form my corns and low and behold she took it!!!! so i got braver around her and she took to handling quite well and i named her meadow;)

20 days later she delivered 18 babies on the 17th of june 2006 best experience of my life.... i ended up keeping one, willow and releasing the rest.....

(out of all 16 released there were 2 that were unlike the rest besides willow and one of them had no/ a very faint stripe and an orange chin.... recaught that one this year i'd recognise her anywhere and so now that's sooty....)

so march of this year i was just messing around and looking up some stuff about garters and i found this site:) and now i'm here to stay as long as it's around:D

[Snake lover 3-25]

hmmmm.... i always thought that they were cool..... then i moved to my new and current house in 6th grade and was in the yard when i discovered dozens of garters!!!:eek: i invited a bunch of people over... mostly from my neighborhood... and i took them down there... well most of them were guys and all of them were too afraid to touch them... so they'd call me when they saw them and i'd come and catch them... so i was walking/crawling up the VERY steep hill carrying at least 7 when my foot slipped on the leaves and uncovered a snake very different than the rest.... i carried about 8-10 of them up in-between my fingers at the same time and put them in a bin too large for them to escape... most of them were biters but the strange one (who i later discovered to be a brown snake) was very calm... my dad came home and i brought him to the bin now containing over 20 and pointed out the brown one asking if i could keep it... much to my surprise he said yes!!!!! then i went in and told mom dad said i could keep it and she was so mad.... lol but it worked!!!!:D:D


so i guess it was my dad who really got me started!!!:eek: maybe that's why i love him so much!!!!!:D


here's mine from the other thread:)

[infernalis]

Well I was originally afflicted with chondro fever, but I saw pugets in kingsnakes classifieds and had to have them. I belive it was dekay that brought me here after seeing the error of my ways. ;)


Thanks Brian:D

[crzy_kevo]

as a kid when i would spend the weekend at my dad house i would occasionaly catch a garter so i have loved reptiles especially snakes from a young age then last summer i stumbled upon george while moving a railroad tie to the fire pit and she shot out i quickly captured her and put her in an empty bin until i was done i then examined her later and decided i would keep her so i set up an enclosure for her (poor girl i didnt have a big enough one for her) after a week of having her i did dome more searching on the net and stumbled upon this place and i have been here ever since :D

[snakeman]

As soon as I saw a flame garter I was immediately hooked.I have had every other kind of snake ,venomous even the high end stuff.I am stuck on garters.

[adamanteus]

Like Tom, I have kept many types of snake.... I simply find garters the most interesting to observe.

[misskris]

Well, my youngest asked for a snake. Everytime we'd go to a pet shop he made a bee line for the reptiles.

Honestly, I'm more than a little affraid of snakes (four older brothers growing up). I didn't feel I was up too a larger snake and my Dh sugested a garter.

I do admit Simone is growing on me :) We're discussing adding another.

[guidofatherof5]

Good for you Kris. The little scrubs do grow on you!

[infernalis]

Like Tom, I have kept many types of snake.... I simply find garters the most interesting to observe.


I will second that motion. and those colours, stunning.

[drache]

when I was a kid, there was a clear distinction between animals to keep and take care of, and animals that existed all around us and that we took care to disturb as little as possible
I was taught a lot about hiding and being patient and following their schedules
we only had two snake species and one of them I only saw once - the Kreuzotter - vipera berus, but there were a few natrix, many lizards (podarcis species mostly and anguis fragilis), all of which I was told to watch not touch, as they could lose their tail
the first time I touched a snake, was when the son of one of my dad's frinds let me hold a boa of some sort, when I was maybe seven or eight years old, and I fell in love with the way it felt to hold a snake
but I didn't get my first snake to keep until I moved to the US
I moved to NYC when I was 20 and I lived in a dorm and since knew nobody I took to hanging out at the local pet shop in my free time
when they got in garters, I took a couple home and one of them became pretty tame
then I had a period of moving around a great deal and being generally unstable, so I didn't have anything but a cat for many years
when Mikhaila became old enough to keep bugging me about a dog, I began inundating her with pics of beautiful snakes and lizards and we found Scott's web-site and, well you know . . .

[GarterNovice]

I've always wanted a snake, but due to having many mice, hamsters, gerbils, and rats as a child I didn't think I could handle feeding one. I never knew there were snakes that didn't eat rodents until I ran across some garters/ribbons at a local pet store. So I got a ribbon since it eats mainly guppies.

[Garterprincess]

My brother was looking for a gecko - we visited a fab reptile shop and then my son decided he wanted a corn snake for his birthday. After much discussion and many more visits to the shop we left with 2 garters, that was in march 08 and we now have a total of four lurvely snakies!!!

[guidofatherof5]

Just when you say you won't get anymore, the numbers increase.
They are addictive little creatures. Life is good but better with 1 more.

[ssssnakeluvr]

been hooked on garters all my life.....even attended a few meetings of thamnophis anonymous....didn't help......still addicted :rolleyes:

[anji1971]

I chased snakes around as a kid, but was never allowed to keep any. Probably a good thing, since I wouldn't have had a clue how to take care of them back then.
My kids found one at my mom's house, and we decided to try to keep her.
AND........as most of you can relate to, it never stops from there.:rolleyes::D

[jitami]

Here's my post from the other thread...


Sounds soooo familiar. I was a tomboy growing up. My cousins and all the neighborhood boys were always catching something! I don't think I ever caught anything bigger than a "blue-belly" lizard, but was always holding some snake or lizard for the boys.

Then a little role reversal. Met my husband, became room mates with another couple and both my (then boyfriend) husband and the other guy were laughingly afraid of snakes. The other guy would scream like a girl and my husband just didn't care for them... said they smell... sigh. So I never pursued snake ownership.

Skip forward a decade or so and I have boys of my own, dancing around the front yard with 4 or 5 other boys, passing this cute little garter snake around. "MOM, can we keep it?" All the while they're dropping it, it's flailing wildly, musking, generally very unhappy. I rescued the poor thing, now named Sly, from the tortuous little boys ;) and it's lived a life of luxury ever sense. :D

Way back then I got some great advice from the kingsnake forum and KitKat in particular. I had read or heard that their lifespan was about 6 years. So, skip forward almost 6 years and it's time for Sly to come out of his self induced brumation and he's staying hidden. I get a little stressed, thinking, this could be it. :( Finally get up the nerve to check on him and he's fine, but that little scare reminded me of how much I've come to enjoy the little guy and how much I would miss him if he were gone :(

Soooo, I take a couple new pics, get on kingsnake and post an update on my little man and soon learn that a 10 year lifespan is common in captivity :D In the meantime someone has pointed me this direction and I quickly discover that I'm going to *need* more garter snakes in my life in the near future. :p

Update since then... we added two captive bred babies, kept a wild girl who showed up in my driveway, and I have plans to add three captive babies this spring. That will probably be it for a couple years... until those three beautiful babies make beautiful babies.