Well, howdy there everyone. This is probably gonna be a bit different of an introduction than you’re used to, so uhh…buckle up I guess haha? My name is August. I am the user formerly known as @garciademueller . Those of you who have been active on this site for a while probably know that name, I was really active on here for a while. Well, that whole time I was active, I wasn’t entirely truthful with y’all.
I made that account in 2021, a month or so before my 12th birthday, so I was only 11 at the time. Really shouldn’t have been on here in the first place, but that’s neither here nor there. Well, no reasonable parent could have their 11 year old child on the internet with strangers advertising that they’re only 11, but I could not be persuaded to stay off of this site, so she made a deal with me. I could be on here so long as she could monitor it, and I used her name and pretended to be her. It stayed like this for a long time, years actually. And I love and respect my mom for that, I wish more parents would set ground rules like that on their kids to keep them safe. But, still, I lied to all of you for years about who I am.
I’m now in my junior year of high school. A lot has happened since I first joined morphmarket. I’ve gone through middle school, a lot of high school, I’ve made so many friends, I’ve lost some of them, gone through some phases I regret, probably in one currently that I’ll regret in the future, I had a girlfriend for a year, broke up with her recently. Most important and relevant to this though, I’ve acquired several animals, lost two of them as I believe I’ve posted about before. Gave a couple more away to friends who would be more passionate about those specific species. Definitely found out I’m not a ball python guy, luckily Dav is with someone who is now. Now I only have my blue tongued skink and my carpet python, and I couldn’t be happier.
Recently, I’ve finally been able to start being involved in the sorts of work I’ve wanted to be involved in for a really long time. I’m writing a book about shark evolution with my buddy, I’m involved in a land preservation project in my hometown, this summer I got to go on a trip up to the Adirondacks with professors from HWS college and Paul Smiths college to do some field work relating to water quality. I’m really beginning my life as a wildlife conservationist, and I’m super excited for the journey ahead.
This forum was kinda foundational for me. This place really fostered my love for reptiles in a beautiful way, and y’all were some of the brightest parts of my day for some time, I was a kid who moved to a new middle school halfway across the country right at the beginning of a global lockdown, I didn’t exactly have friends for a long time. Thank you all for being so positive and encouraging and helping me to grow, both as a keeper and as a person.
With everything going on in my life recently, I wanted to get back to this. I have for a while, but I was tired of keeping up the lie. Well, I’m at the age now where I can have my own presence on the internet with my own name attached to it. So, I really hope you all can forgive me for being dishonest for so many years, and I hope there will be plenty of good years on this site to come, with me now as Limelight Ecology.
And of course, a couple bad pics of Rosie and Mercury that I just took haha
it was really an unforgettable experience. On the topic of nature’s artwork, a facility we visited and did some work in had a tank with spotted turtles, and I snapped this pic of one of them. Absolutely stunning turtle, they’ve always been my favorite native turtle species by far.