Let's all confess

[Slannesh]

Several years ago mind you....

But decided my newish (several months) gold dusted day gecko could use a buddy, so I bought a green anole... no UV, no UTH, but the temps were about right thanks to my trusty heat lamp in a 'natural' terrarium complete with live plants that I haven't a clue if they were safe to keep them with or not

Fed them every other day... so unfortunately they both took a very long time to die I still feel really bad for the poor little buggers. I know better now anyhow.

[HeatherRose]

Hmm...

In grade 7 my friends and I used to buy guppies at the petstore, put them in babyfood jars (full of water with air holes) and keep them in our desks until we brought them home and put them in our fish tanks.

I caught a frog in my pool once, and kept it in a drawer under my bed for a night. It escaped, and hopped into my little sister's room. My mom never believed her that a frog had happened along into her room in the middle of the night, scaring the crap out of her. I found it the next morning and let it go outside

Although, I can never remember NOT fully researching anything before I got it, even those little guppies.

Maybe I'm just a nerd. Same with herps, even my very first one, researched to the fullest before I ordered it online and it was shipped to my door. Probably the dumbest thing there, was attempting to feed it those freeze-dried crickets from PetSmart. (It was a crested gecko, I figured it would work for some reason.)

Other than that, my biggest mistake was probably my 'free roaming' ball python. He escaped often, and was a repeat offender. I finally fixed his enclosure

[justinO]

I once bought an albino leopard gecko and it escaped in the car on the way home. when i got home i freaked out looking for it and i finially found it. i had stepped on it in my frenzy looking for it.

also had a snake escape in a car (hole in the snake bag) it took a few hours and a completely dismantled dashboard to get it out.
when i was much younger, I kept multiple small lizard species together on corn-cob substrate. 3 lizards died from what I can assume to be impaction. I bought them from a fish store as well.



now all herps are double contained when in transport. on the odd time I transport venomous, they get triple contained.

of all the things i've learned in the last 8 years, its been to research the animal either before you get it.

[Linds]

Originally posted by RMBolton
Ditto! Used hot-rocks too *shudders* That was about 11 years ago now (no internet access, no literature - that I could find).

LOL not that literature necessarily can help you out of that! I'm lucky my iguana lived as long as she did (20 years), and I attribute it mostly to her summers outdoors. We got her when I was 3 or 4 years old, complete with a book on iguanas. We kept her with a hot rock on corn cob and fed her mostly carrots and romaine lettuce supplemented with vitamin powder and bird gravel (hey, the book told us they needed it to digest their food ) until she had a good case of MBD. We took her to the vet, who contacted the Toronto or Buffalo zoo (I can't remember which one, I was so young), where they told us she needed to be fed either dog food or monkey biscuits She was fed that for quite a length of time, and it wasn't until the internet years that she finally received the proper care That being said, books STILL aren't always reliable, the last one I ruffled through was on monitors, claiming they needed to be kept with an 80-90 gradient

[Nicky]

Hmmm lets see..... a year ago when I had my frogs, they had come down with red leg so I put them in a rubbermaid to use to transport them to the vets office and left the room to check some things, when I came back I saw the lide slightly off and one less frog. After 2 hours of searching I found him behind the t.v, luckly he was still alive.

[ChokeOnSmoke]

My first and worst mistake was an impulse buy from an awful pet store. It was a hybrid or inbred rat/corn snake of some kind. Wasn't feeding and had an old shed or two stuck on it. Well I ended up after much research getting the sheds off but had to force feed the poor little thing about three times. I'm sure it was more stressful for the snake but it was damn stressful on me as well. It almost turned me off of the hobby...... almost.... then I found this site bought a snake from a reputable breeder and all was good. You live and learn too bad sometimes its at the expense of a living creature.
Good thread

[Bristen]

I'm going to be 31 years old in a few weeks and I've been keeping some herps (here and there) for about 20 years... As previously mentionned multiple times, information was not readily available years ago like it is today.. not at all... This meant more mistakes were being done. At local petshops here (the only source for herps other than wild caught at the time) did not have much litterature. And let's be very honest, some of those older "pet shop" books were not that great to begin with!

I used to keep my boa with a 100W light bulb on all night... bizarely, it never struck my mind that it's a nocturnal animal and that bulb would be producing light 24/7...? Also the unprotected heat lamp in enclosure thinking my boa was going to be "smart" enough not to get burnt on it (was a bad burn, but she got a full recovery though)... I also used toxic glues in an enclosure and this resulted in my baby snow corn snake dying of liver failure and it's central nervous system being completely shot (not pretty!!)...

However, this next one is by far the worst one...

This was about 17 years ago (I was 14 at the time I think). I had 4 large red-eared sliders that I kept in a large aquarium with power filter (only water, no gravel, no basking spot, etc)... I was feeding them cat food which is what a local "expert" and owner of a reptile zoo told me to feed them A friend of mine caught a large wood turtle and gave it to me.. I stupidly put the wood turtle with the RES! but it gets worst... Activities in high school kept me very busy so I was not able to "care" for the turtles anymore.. so, yup you guessed it.. I let the wood turtle go in the woods in our back yard *shudder*... but it gets much worst... I haven't had turtles since, so I don't know exactly what their problem was (I'm guessing there could of been something wrong with the well water, the diet was horrible, and no sunlight for calcium absorption?).. anyways, the shells were disintegrating<sp?>... this condition ended up creating holes in their shells, and one even had a hole in his jaw... so me thinking this was some incurable disease (because the local "expert" didn't know what it was), I decided that I would rather euthanize them than watch them die slowly... we had the "bright idea" of gasing them with carbon monoxide. So I started my dad's truck, placed the turtles in a cardboard box with a hole in it and stuck the truck's tail pipe in the box... how did I not think of how long turtles hold their breath under water is beyond me... I had seen them sleep in the bottom of the aquarium (under water) before...? the poor turtles died only after a long hour in that box... I checked on them after 15 minutes and I saw them gasping for air... I think they died of actually being cooked alive rather than the original intent of gassing them... I'll never forget them

On a positive note, I second what Jeff said.. as long as we reduce the mistakes and not repeat the same ones. I would have to say though, that people don't have as many excuses today as they used to... we are all much less ignorant of how to keep herps nowadays. There's a LOT of information available for all those that want to RESEARCH how to keep the animals that interest them BEFORE they get them at their house.

Excellent thread!

Retreating in shame,
Bristen.

[loveispretend]

I'm actually amazed that my herps have not had to pay a terrible price for my stupidity, especially early on. Some examples:
As a young kid, I would gather a crop of wc kings, garters, etc. every summer. When it was feeding time, I would drop live, fully conscious rodents in with them, and then wander off, often leaving the mouse in for days until it was finally eaten. When I was cleaning cages everything (including large king snakes) would get dumped in a box together until I was all done. To this day I don't understand why, but luckily none of those poor snakes was ever eaten by a rodent or a bigger snake.
When I was a young teenager, I was lazy and tossed my jacket on the dresser by one of my bp's tanks and left the house for several hours. My careless toss actually twisted the heat lamp so that it was flush against the glass. When I came home hours later, the heat had warped the lid and shattered the glass, and the snake was nowhere to be seen. Once again, dumb luck prevented anything major from happening. I found my bp soon after, amazingly free of burns and cuts.
The dumbest mistake I made that did have an ill effect on a snake was this... when I was about 14, I had a gopher snake that was doing miserably, and I just could not figure out why for the longest time. I played around with food, heat, etc. for months, before figuring out that MAYBE it was a bad idea to keep a snake tank about 3 inches in front of a huge floor speaker that I blared ridiculously loud and pounding music from for hours every day. Thankfully, the poor thing recovered very quickly once he had some peace.

[sapphire_moon]

years ago, before *I* had the internet, and books weren't that helpfull. I had an iguana, that as it got older (with me it actually got to about 3ft with tail) got very mean (kitty used to like to sit and stare at it, and bat at the glass...oh and it was in a tank, no uv, lettuce, crickets..etc..etc.. all the bad iggy mistakes) luckily someone came that had other iggies, and within a week we got pics of it (Free roaming) a house, and sitting there watching t.v being petted like a dog.


Same mistake with the anoles, the made great earrings though, lol.

hot rocks, heat lamps (for non daytime herps) those "water frogs", turtles. I once had a box turtle that was WC fed hamburger and lettuce, I had it until winter when one day it didn't come out of it's shell. I now realize it was probably hibernating since it was WC and obciously much older......we gave it the "garbage bag burial"

and with my snakes, before I could get the book and before I started on here, 20 L tank, newspaper (though thats not bad) and a water bowl, nothing to control the heat, and thats it, amazingly he always ate great, and I had him for about 3-3.5 years.

I had to give him up because I didn't have my lease signed and had to choose between my snakes/ breeder rats/breeder mice and a place to live.

we decided to keep the hognose because he was the smallest and easiest to hide. It was hard to let our corn go though because she was an anniversary present from me to my partner.

but we will again one day get more snakes, and I will have the beautiful black blood I want. And maybe get back into bp's.

[justinO]

for me, and I still feel horrible about it, when I was 10 I got a pair of turtles from the pet store.... I bought them all the best stuff, food, accesories, everything....... no one told me I had to HEAT them!
So in the summer, they were fine (by the window)... but in the winter they went into hybernation and never came out! I found out years later that with a simple light/heat, they would have been just fine. Stupid pet store.

Jessy

[dave68]

here's a funny mistake (well not funny for mr but Dave got a kick out of it) We made the mistake bought 12 live full grown mice and stopped in quickly to visit someone in the hospital not thinking to check on the mice when we got in the car to leave. Well we were driving for about 10 mins and all of a sudden I felt something in my pant leg climbing higher and higher, I was like Dave I think theres a bug in my pants or something, and All of a sudden remembered oh s*@* the mice, sure enought the mice had chewed out of the box and one was venturing up my pant leg, I hate mice and Dave got quite the laugh out of it!!!!!! We had a 40 min drive and did not find all of them what a long nerve racking drive that was!!LOL!!!
Allison

[daiyoukai]

this has happend a few times. I'll take a ball python out to show people who have stoped by my house, smoke alil something and become simi intoxicated and totaly forget the snake was sitting right next to me 5 mins befor.
Then about an hour later when I coem to my senses I'll look over and see that I FORGOT WHERE MY PYTHON WENT! but I keep my door closed so it's always a matter of just finding her. one day I was sitting at my computer just as I am now and feel this cool lumb run across my foot and sure enough it was my ball python healthy as ever stoping by to say "whats up"


another was a few years ago I was called by a friend to take care of a black snake that was living under there steps. I found the snake and it had to have been close to 7 feet long. IT WAS A HUGE black snake. so I put a rake over it's neck like Iv seen steve erwin do and picked him up by the neck and rear. thats when all the kids that were swiming in the pond on the property came by to see and they must have spooked that snake pretty bad because it just fliped out! it eventualy got loose from my hand and went into the pond where all the ******* kids procedded to beat it to death with sticks. If it were my property I would have slaped the **** out of all of them but teh parents of the kids showed no interest that their children just murdered a harmless non venomous snake thats soul reason of living upto this point was to eat the rats that had (once) plagued there farm house. I felt responsible for the snakes death and now know I could have caused less of a scene and got the snake relocated without it having been stressed and beaten to death.

-Edited for profanity-Heather

[Orianna]

well I've got one confession. I live in Orlando while I go to school but my husband and friends live in Ft Lauderdale. He has our 8 KSBs and I have our BRB. When I first moved up here I would take Red home with me. I always traveled at night after work. But this one time in may I went home during the day. Red travels in her feed container which is a plastic herp cage. She fried on the way down there. To make it a bit worse I was to feed her at the shop down there when I arrived. I went and got her a rat and held it above her head. That is when I noticed she wasn't moving or smelling or breathing. Right there at the counter in a reptile shop that I was a regular for yrs at. I was so heart broken that I had killed her. My husband was called for me to tell him what happened and that I was in condition to talk or drive. He had to come and get me. Before he took me home though he made me pic out a new baby BRB and bought it for me. Some crap about get back in the saddle when your thrown off. Well Chesnut is doing great.
p.s. I had a taxidermist skin Red so I could keep her and have a constant reminder to never do anything like that again.