Like most of you I’ve been fascinated with reptiles my entire life. Some of my earliest memories are of chasing lizards and frogs in our yard when I was 3 or 4 years old. Growing up in Houston, Tx I had my first pets early on keeping as many skinks, anoles, toads, green tree frogs, wolf spiders, and box turtles, etc. as I could find cages for in my room. I spent most of my free time at home looking for them and watching them, and most of my free time at school reading about them or talking about them to anyone who would listen. Not a lot has changed in that respect. I’ve probably kept in excess of 200 species over the years and successfully bred around 15 of those species.
My favorite thing to do these days is the educational presentations I give at the Las Vegas Natural History Museum and Las Vegas Science and Technology Expo every summer for the past 5-6 years. I’m currently working on some colubrid hybrid projects and a small collection of boas. While I understand the issues that many hobbyist have against hybrids I find them extremely rewarding to work with and I love the world of possibilities they open up. My most recent clutch was a small clutch of Sonoran Gopher snake x Corn snakes out of which I got 2 normals and 3 albinos! The gopher snake is a long-term captive that was originally captured in the Phoenix, Arizona area and this being her first year to breed we had no idea she was carrying the gene for albinism or that it would be compatible with the albino gene in the corn snake.
All of that being said, I definitely also appreciate keeping lines pure and will always do everything I can to keep from unintentionally muddying up pure lines. Hybridization should be approached with intent and tracked meticulously.
I’m always open for an intelligent discussion on these and many other topics which is why I’m here.
I recently got my website up and running and decided to add a blog to it. I’m going to try my best to keep up with it posting on new topics and such. Sharing here is not meant to take away from this community at all as I would very much appreciate some interaction on the site as well as feedback from you fine folks. You can also see my entire collection in one place. The only thing I havent added pictures of are the spiders and a couple of natives. My first blog post is about “The Good, The Bad, and The Gross” of keeping reptiles. Let me know what you think.
