your first reptile encounter

[Hetty]

Apart from garden skinks.. when I was a kid (I think I was about eight, I can't remember) I went to Taronga and one of the keepers put a corn snake around my neck.

That was followed by several months of me asking my mother if we could get a corn snake :lol:

 

[Barno111]

When i was a young fella out at gaynday we were always catching young breaded dragons a frillys! keeping them and then letting them go and catching some more! We also use to go catch turtles every year down at the river! I always wanted a snake since i was about 6 but it wasnt until i was 18 that i was allowed to do what i wanted when i wanted in the house so i went and got one! it didnt help that my good friends had just gotten into them about 6 months earlier! so they kinda set off a little thing for them again! I know can say that i would rather have a heap more snakes then having a dog! lot easier on me!

 

[tenacres1100]

my son's first encounter was when he was in a carry pouch I was carrying him on my front, we went down to our dam and must have startled the snake (don't know if it was a tiger or brown) as it leapt at us 3 or 4 times before turning and going down into the scrub all I could think of was his little legs dangling.
The next time for him was when he was 3, my 5 yo daughter came in and said Shaun's tring to catch a lizard but it doesn't have legs, it was a 8-10" long red bellied black snake, he had it in his bug catcher

 

[megrim]

I grew up in Iceland, and until I moved to Australia at 17, I had never seen a reptile in the flesh.

My first encounter was on a holiday to the Gold Coast, I was cycling with friends, and I stopped to do something, looked down, and saw a very upset, tiny and squirming snake under my front wheel. I almost killed myself jumping off the bike in terror, as I used to assume pretty much everything in Australia was deadly. It runed out to be a juvy brown tree.

After that I set to learning all I could about Australia's snakes, and have since come to love them. Especially brown tree snakes, which have become a real favourite of mine. ^_^

 

[disasterpiece7.0]

Like some others, I've been hunting bugs and what not since I physically could. First major one I remember, I wa at my grandmothers place playing in the back yard (must have been 4 - 5 y/o). Went up the back section of the garden, a raised coutyard kinda thing. Found a massive red belly. I knew not to touch snakes by that point so I went and grabbed my grandmother who chased it off with a pitch fork. She probably would have killed it but I told her not too .

Good times playing with snakes in the yard.

 

[Rainbow-Serpent]

Believe it or not, there was a time when I thought snakes were icky, yucky, slimey things.:shock:

Then I went to Australia Zoo one day, and got my photo taken with "Jenny" the leucistic Burmese python, at first I was so scared I nearly wet my pants, having a big snake on me, but after a little while of holding her (it took a while to take the pics), I though she was kinda cool!
Then I went to some place (I think it was Currumbin), and I held a few more snakes, and after a while I absolutly fell in love with them!, then came 5yrs of winging to mum "Can I have a Burmese python?:lol:

It was only at the start of 08' that I convinced her

Then I cried when I found out Burmese Pythons were illegal :cry:

In a few weeks in picking up a little Spotted though

 

[pythonmum]

Can't remember my first reptile encounter. Parents were scared stiff of snakes (still not thrilled by them), but let me keep a hatchling snapping turtle I found when I was about 6 years old. When we moved to Arizona I kept a banded gecko and a western box turtle. In high school I worked at a science museum and used to take a collection of "creepy crawlers" to libraries to do talks. These included a corn snake, rat snake, desert tortoise and a gila monster. (Now THAT'S a lizard!)

My first Australian herp encounters were outside Mt Isa on the Riversleigh cattle station. I was hunting fossils with a bunch of biologists. We caught, photographed and released a wide variety of animals. There was a magnificent olive python large enough to eat a wallaby, but gentle enough for children to handle, file snakes, Macleay's water snake, various lizards and (my favourite) a children's python which we found in a bat cave. The children's really got to me. I loved the eyes. Many years later, our first snakes were Antaresia.

 

[ogg666]

My first encounter (that I can remember) was at North Entance N.S.W and I went to pick up what I thought was a rubber snake which turned out to be a huge Red belly,Luckily my dad was there to tell me it wasn't a "rubber snake" ,I would of been 4 or 5....

 

[jibba]

I was about 14 riding my dirt bike accross my parents place called "Flat Tracks", it wasn't flat at all. lol. Anyway I ran out of juice so I was pushing my KX80, then I saw something move right in front of me. Being a stupid little kid, I lifted up an old car radiator where I thought it went, and there was this huge brown snake curled up and just gazed at me. I slowly put down the radiator then ran to my bike and pushed the bike at full sprinting speed (funniest thing ever). I never touched or liked reptiles until now, a good 15 years later. I will handle any reptile (as long as it can be handled) with no issues or fears. I find them ever so fascinating.

There you go.

 

[wiz-fiz]

when I was 3-5 years old we had a blue togue in our bak yard.


Will

 

[tattoolizzie]

In the cupboard in my grandmothers house under piles of piano manuscripts and old junk is a slim white cardboard box.... inside is a stuffed baby crocodile which apparently my mad great aunt (who happens t be a nun; Sister Mary Joseph) caught, skun and taxidermied herself way back in the 1920's when she was a missionary in Papua New Guinea.

When I was a kid I used to spent hours playing with the poor little thing, wishing it were my pet. I think it started there ...........

Cheers.

Lizzie

 

[Harmony67]

When I was 5 years old my parents bought a new house. We moved in and moms family all came to see the house. While we were walking around the yard a big blue racer came out from under the edge of the house and slithered across the property. My grandfather pronounced that was a sign of good luck.

I was never afraid of snakes and I think that is why. I was told they were good right from the start.

 

[snakes4me2]

I was about 8 when i found a little skink at my nans house and picked it up, it latched hold of my finger and i thought i was going to die lol. I squeeled like a pig too :lol:

 

[dailyskin]

I can't remember the first - lots of touching and watching at Shows etc. as a kid, plus the zoo...

But the first time I REALLY got interested was at an expo where some guy draped THREE red bellies (milked or de-vend or something bad) over me... People were taking photos, as they wove through my hair, all over my face and neck... It was AWESOME and after that I really started thinking about getting a python...

LOL now I know that my kids will grow up being thoroughly used to them!

 

[XKiller]

i was eight and i saw a rbb snake crall over my foot whilst i stopted my motorbike for a rest sitting down i had boots on so i couldent feel him

 

[dailyskin]

Ok I just asked my dad via email. Apparently when I was 3, we were at Wilson's Prom out walking, and I said, "Look daddy! A lizard with no legs! Let's save him!". When dad looked, it was a RBBS! About 2 feet from me lol...

 

[abbott75]

I think mine was when I was maybe 5... in the middle of a carpark on a hot summers day I found a hatchy Eastern Snakeneck Turtle... convinced dad to let us take it home. That turtle (Shelly) stayed in the family for about 10 years. Eventually it went to my grandfathers place, and after a few years there he let it go.

 

[elapid@]

Just as if it had happend yesterday.

My first encounter was with a large tiger snake that i saw in a cats mouth, that came running from next door with the neighbour behind it with a shovel. The cat dropped it.I was like dooooonnnn't and he said ''move away boy these are deadly go on get"' so he chopped it , but he hit it in the middle of the snake and it wiggled around in pain then he draged it accross the road near the paddock. i went and had a look and it was still alive so i got a big rock and put it to peace. i was about 5 years of age. from there on there i had a passion for reptiles. I saw the cat after laying in the shade under a tree. Nothing happend to it. After that incident i was always on the look for reptiles. Then the snake dreams started kicking in.

cheers steve

 

[Jewly]

We had a pet turtle at our pre-school when I was little but I was never really into reptiles at all. Would never have dreamed I would ever get into them like I have but now I'm absolutely hooked.

I was always scared of snakes but facinated by them so that's what prompted me to get my first snake in May '08 and I've been addicted ever since.

 

[shadowsabre]

thing that got me started on what people call weird pets was a tarantula

one of my mates dads had one i think i was like 5? when i first got to hold it was as big as my hand(my childhood memory may me exagerated)..... but i ask mum if i could get one and see said over her dead body. lol

haven't got a tarantula .... yet, but had weird pets as long as i can remember.

next time mum comes to my place she may leave running a screaming cause i'll have at least 2 snakes. lol