Epiphany - (awakenings)

[NikkiSixx]

well thanx garter gertie. and i have been folowing in his footsteps since i was little.

[jitami]

Hey Nikki... you're a lucky boy to share a common passion with your dad. You'll really appreciate it when you get older! (I promise )

I have 14 & 16 year old boys. Fun stuff! Some rough stuff, too, but it seems mostly good. My oldest just got his drivers license and he's having a ball with his new found freedom. He also just got his first job to pay for gas to fuel his new found freedom

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

this thread is so fun to read

I was not born with a fascination for just snakes... but all things scaley or with more than four legs. When I was in grade school... I was "bug girl"... I had a special fondness for mantids and I also kept numerous giant millipedes, hissing cockroaches and my favorite was a lubber grasshopper.... a large clumsy black and yellow grasshopper from i have no idea where. I cried and cried and cired my eyes out when she died!

I think my parents kind of jumpstarted it for me.. when I was 5 they got me my first pet, a Tarantula! It was a male and sadly he didn't last long. What do msot kids get? a hamster. I got a hamster next. I hated it. that was my last hamster.

When i was something along the lines of 10 years old... I saw a garter snake on the lawn. Me being me of course, I already knew it was a garter snake from my little field guide and I grabbed it. It was a huge oafy garter and it must have bitten my arm 10 times... blood everywhere!! My mom was horrified... me? that was it for me!!! I let that one go, but I ended up finding a separate garter that very same day and she was soooo friendly. Her name was Slither.. even my mom was fascinated by her. I will never forget seeing my mom hold a snake for the first time.. and seeing slither's reflection in her sunglasses. the image sticks with me. Slither came home with us.. and as summer grew old, slither produced 11 little slithers that thouroughly confused my dad who was the only one home. At that time, my parents decided to release both slither and all her young.

After that point, It took me FOUR years to get what was at that time the snake of my dreams: a california kingsnake. To me they were the most beautiful snake on earth. After four years and saving a bunch of change, at 14 years old I got Bandit, whom I still have and whom I call my first snake because, he was my first REAL snake that I really knew what I was doing. I was so happy. All of my friend could not understand why I was SO happy to get Bandit.

My collection slowly grew... I got a second cali king, i rescued her, her name was spooky. she was a big girl. Her time was short with me but she is missed dearly to this day.

Then as I continued to learn more about the reptile world, I read in reptiles magazine about reptile shows and learned that tehre is one an hour from my house! so i went to my first hamburg show and beleive it or not.... my parents bought more than i did!!! I have actually gotten my parents into snakes... not to the point where they read about and buy them, but they appreciate them and take interest. And when they would take me to shows, my dad would always go off on his own and end up buying some random corn or king! On his own, he bought a total of 2 male pueblan milksnakes(sold), 2 adult corns(sold), one baby cali king (never made it), my leucistic albino texas rat, an albino banana cali king (sold) and my pair of okeetees het snow that bred this year!

So that is how i got into snakes.... whew... epic post!

[ssssnakeluvr]

Hey Nikki... you're a lucky boy to share a common passion with your dad. You'll really appreciate it when you get older! (I promise )

HAHAHAHAHA by the way....NIkki is my daughter!!!!!!

she was named after Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue....my favorite band!! I just loved the name Nikki....

[crzy_kevo]

well as a kid when i went to go visit my dad out in the middle of nowhere in michigan my sister and i would go out and catch garters just to look at them
then about 6-7 years ago i was doing a school project on a self contained eco system and thought how cool it would be to have a garter snake in there and thought it would be cool to have one for a pet
however i never got around to finding one and even if i had my mom wouldn't have let me keep it

so now that im all grown up and living on my own when i found george i just had to keep him i have always loved snakes

so he just makes the perfect pet for me.

[Odie]

I would find them and play with them, take them home as a child. My Mom would tell my to "Put it back were I got it!!" Even if that ment walking two miles. About two years ago My wife (Robin) came home, after her morning walk, with Strip and we both got infected We are the proud caregivers to 5 Garters now

[jitami]

HAHAHAHAHA by the way....NIkki is my daughter!!!!!!

she was named after Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue....my favorite band!! I just loved the name Nikki....

YIKES SO SORRY NIKKI!!! I had picked up on the Nikki Sixx connection(kinda hard not to) but I don't know why I assumed that she was a he. Ok, I'll keep my boys far away from Nikki for at least a few more years anyway!

[ssssnakeluvr]

YIKES SO SORRY NIKKI!!! I had picked up on the Nikki Sixx connection(kinda hard not to) but I don't know why I assumed that she was a he. Ok, I'll keep my boys far away from Nikki for at least a few more years anyway!

I am keeping boys away from her.....at least trying!!!!!

[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!!! 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!!!!


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

[infernalis]

So Shanley's first love was a Dekay Brown snake, hmm where have I heard that one before???