After many days of searching, I got one!

[adamanteus]

I beat you there, Don...I kept my first snakes in 1966!

[ssssnakeluvr]

Yea, ya got me by a few....although I was catching them not long after that....about 3-4 years....I was catching them when I was real little. We kept fence lizards when I was that 3 or 4, but the snakes didn't get to stay until 80....

[drache]

that's a very nice snake, Lee
congratulations

[GarterGuy]

wandering garters can be gray to brown to green...little bit of variety! They were the first snake I started keeping...back in 1980!!!!!

LOL....funny....got my first garter in 1980 as well! Had been keeping other snakes 5yrs. prior to that though (yeh, started at a very young age!)
Roy

[adamanteus]

Just read back through this thread...you know what, although I had my first snakes in '66, my first Garter (Florida Blue T. s. sirtalis) was also in '80!! Must have been something in the water that year!

[drache]

very nice snake, Lee
my wandering is my favourite
enjoy

[abcat1993]

Wow, everybody was between toddler and young elementary school age (3-6) when they started keeping reptiles. I just got my snake, but I had anoles (unsuccessfully) when I was about 6.

[Stefan-A]

Wow, everybody was between toddler and young elementary school age (3-6) when they started keeping reptiles. I just got my snake, but I had anoles (unsuccessfully) when I was about 6.

I was 26 when I started keeping snakes.


Started with reptiles when I was 10, if you don't count the ones I had been catching and releasing since I was old enought to walk.

[Dracaena828]

Wow you guys did start really little... I got my first pet at nine and it was a snake only because my mom didn't like other animals and we lived in an apartment that only allowed caged animals. I'd always loved animals and wanted a pet, but she did not, did not, did not! I remember sitting at the zoo one day just rattling off a list of any animals I could think of, asking if each kind was an animal I could have as a pet. When I got to a snake she paused, said hmm, that she would think about it. Go figure the animal most moms would have said no way to was the one she ended up agreeing to....
We picked up Oscar, a common garter, from the small local pet store a few weeks later. Who knew that little guy would start....
To this day she is convinced my facination with reptiles started with a baby sitter when I was really young who had a snake that lived in her walls. I do remember that snake and thought it was the neatest thing ever...

[drache]

all the animals we kept when I was a kid were useful animals - dogs for hunting, horses to help with the harvest and other things (okay, I had fun riding them), chickens, geese and fish for food, sheep for food and thistle control, eventually a cat for mice.
there were plenty of other critters to watch and interact with, but they were to be respected and left alone ("how would you feel, if someone snatched you out of your home and made you live with scary giants?")
so I did not get to keep pets until college and garters were my first