Hello fellow snake people

[FWK]

Hello fellow snake people. I've been lurking around this forum for a little bit now, figured it's time I introduce myself seeing as how y'all have a section just for introductions. I've been field herping since I was a small child. My family moved out of Houston Texas when I was just eight and into the country where my love for nature and the outdoors really began to flourish. My dad had some fantasy of being a farmer/rancher so as soon as he retired from the P.D. he bought a house with a little land (one acre lol) and stuffed it full of livestock and crops. He raised goats, chickens and quail, as well as more crops than I could ever remember. The great thing (in my opinion anyway) about this little piece of land was that it sat on the backside of a small neighborhood some one hundred yards in front of a large swampy area fed by a seasonal creek. The swamp was home to an incredible array of life. Bobcats, foxes, deer and more birds, fish, insects and amphibians than you could shake a stick at. And of course, snakes. Lots of snakes. The poultry my dad raised attracted the snakes out of the swamp and the birds mess attracted rodents, which attracted even more snakes. My dad was not one to kill a snake on sight but he would kill anything venomous as well as anything he found eating one of his birds or their young. For years I tried to get up before him every day and relocate any snakes I found around the bird enclosures before he had a chance to kill them. By far the most common snake I found in and around the bird enclosures were Cottonmouths, followed by Rat Snakes and Water Snakes. Garters, Ribbons, Whips and Racers were also common. Kings, Hognose, Corals, Copperheads and Rattlers were rarely encountered and therefor very exciting finds. The Cottonmouths seemed particularly fond of eating the adult quail. They'd squeeze into the enclosures through the wire, eat a quail then be to fat to get back out. I'd find them coiled up in the nesting boxes looking very irritated with the rest of the quail still spazzing out all around them. I found it amusing, my dad not so much. As a kid I kept all sorts of critters, although my mom never allowed snakes in the house (what she didn't know couldn't hurt her, right?). Birds, fish, lizards and arachnids could all be found in my room at any given time. One wall in my room was taken up by a huge, multi-level floor to ceiling custom built enclosure housing an adult Green Iguana. Opposite was a row of aquariums and cages. When I left home most of my critters were re-homed and in better than a decade now I've kept nothing other than nature aquariums, although I still do a lot of field herping. Then last summer I was poking around craigslist looking for another used aquarium when I came across an add titled "Ball Python with aquarium" and a light bulb went off. Fast forward a year and I've got a half dozen snakes in two small rack systems and I'm building larger racks as well as individual enclosures out of plywood from plans I found on this forum. I've been wondering what to do with that spare bedroom...

TL;DR Sometimes I get a little carried away telling stories. What I meant to say was Hi! I like snakes and I oughta be hanging around these parts for a long time, looking forward to meeting some like minded people.

[sharthun]

Hey and welcome! Cool intro and background!

[drumcrush]

Hey, welcome what a story!

[KarenL]

Welcome FWK! My mum was also pretty relaxed about all the critters we brought home but drew the line at spiders and snakes. She almost had a heart attack when she found the rat I had liberated from my school biology lab living in the top drawer of my dresser!

[FWK]

Thanks y'all. Finding a rat probably would have put my mom on the roof too Karen. I don't recall ever catching a rat but field mice were easy to find. Fortunately she largely ignored the containers scattered randomly throughout my room. I think she decided it was better to not know lol. Ignorance is bliss. Excellent work though, liberating the rat. Did she let you keep it?

[EL Ziggy]

Welcome and best wishes FWK.

[KarenL]

Sadly the rat had to go FWK - it traveled back to school with me under my jacket nuzzling my neck and I decided there was no way he was going to end up as a science experiment so I released him in the school grounds! Obviously now I would never release captive animals into the wild but my 14-year-old self knew no better!

[Pirarucu]

Welcome aboard!

[jpsteele80]

Welcome aboard, nice intro