Repticon
After working for the reptile lab for about a month, I decided I wanted to own a reptile of my own. I’d never been allowed to have one as a kid, but truth be told I wasn’t entirely interested either. Now, I can’t get enough of them. I did a lot of research and figured out, first and foremost, what I didn’t want. I counted out turtles and tortoises because I own a cat and don’t have enough space for them to be happy, and counted out most lizards because I’m not really prepared to feed live food.
I narrowed it down to either getting a gargoyle gecko or a corn snake. I did hours and hours of research on both, including playing with the labs milk snake “Fred” before I decided to get a corn. Ashlie and I bought tickets to Repticon, Atlanta to look at specimens and get our own there.
We started our adventure to Atlanta last Friday, and promptly decided that all road trips should require a Dairy Queen stop. We saw a sign for one just past the GA border, got lost trying to find it, and arrived at it 20 minutes later. It was the Dairy Queen from Hell. It tried to present itself as though it were an actual, sit down restaurant. This atmosphere was killed by the fact that every table was dirty, the place was full of people but was eerily quiet, and there was a huge garden bed full of dusty fake plants taking up the center of the seating area. They insisted on bringing out food to our table, which would have been great if they hadn’t given my food to someone else. I finally got my food to go so I could eat and still drive. The ranch dressing came in a non-descript white container and looked like semen. Ashlie and I screamed when I opened it, closed it, and did not reopen it.
I think I know where they're getting their recipes.
A lot of strange things happened that weekend. I got lost about 8 times driving different places, which ended up making me spend close to 15 hours driving in a 72 hour period. I also couldn’t find a single corn snake at the convention, and after asking around discovered that corn snakes are illegal in GA. Apparently, it’s been illegal to buy or sell native non-venomous reptiles in GA since the 60’s.
I was crushed, but kept looking at snakes just in case. Ashlie found a baby gargoyle gecko that she fell in love with but was reluctant to get. It took a bunch of convincing for her to decide to finally get it, and named him/her Gaius/Caprica (not sure of the gender yet).
Note the awesome hotel towel we "borrowed" for substrate.
I was underwhelmed and disappointed with the snakes I was handling until a baby ball python caught my eye. He wasn’t any special morph, but he was a pretty golden brown and black color. When I handled him he was alert and curious, and I fell in love. After 3 hours of handling pythons, milk snakes, king snakes, and boas he is the only one who stood out to me. I bought him, and we were on our merry way.
I took a ton of pictures at the con, but haven't had a chance to put them on the computer yet. Dice, Joe, Dan, Ashlie and I were all there, and I think I managed to get pictures of everyone but me. Plus, I got tons of pictures of all the awesome reptiles. I'll post them later.
We had the interesting task of smuggling our new pets into the hotel room and then making said room hospitable for reptiles with no one noticing. We got them in ok, set up small tanks for them, and cranked up the heat in the room to make the little guys happy. We turned down the heat at night so it was cool enough for us to sleep, but I got worried about my snake and pulled him out to make sure he was warm. He saw the TV and pulled himself into an S shape and hissed at it, which had to be the most adorable thing I've ever seen. Poor little guy is so young, he thinks everything is trying to eat him.
The next day when we left we had to smuggle the gecko and snake back out to the car and past cleaning ladies. It involved a lot of peeking around corners and sprinting. Ashlie’s words were, “I feel like I’m doing something naughty.” XD
Another challenge that owning the snake presented was the knowledge that Max is scared of reptiles. I decided about a couple weeks ago that the best way to combat this was exposure therapy, so I keep changing his desktop to pictures of snakes when he isn’t looking. I also thought that if I got a snake and named it an endearing name, it would make the situation less threatening. I compiled a list of names and charted Max’s terror level, 1 being not scary and 10 being “pissed my pants.”
1. Tiberius: Captain Kirk’s middle name. Nerdy, and potentially acceptable.
2 . Tymora: Goddess of luck in Faerun.
4. Cassandra: Cool name, but has that “SSSsss” sound in it, which could evoke a terror response.
5. Lucien: Sort of sinister sounding, but not too bad. One of my favorite characters from Oblivion.
7. Shar: “Bad things will happen if we bring this snake into our house.”
10. Nagini: “OH GOD IT’S GOING TO EAT ME.”
I fail to understand his terror.
Luckily, Daniel thought of a name immediately: “Artemis Entreri”, Max’s favorite character out of RA Salvatore’s books. I’d say the name is about a 4 on the “Max Terror Scale.” Max actually held him on Tuesday, which was remarkably earlier than I thought he was going to. Luckily he held him before we fed him last night. In a flash Artie grabbed the dead mouse from my tongs and constricted it for a good ten minutes before unhinging his jaw and swallowing it. Max's eyes were huge the whole time, and whenever I asked him if he was okay he just replied, "This is so metal."
Pictured: Adorable and Metal in the shape of a burrito.
*TLDR: I now own a snake, his name is Artemis, and he is awesome.
I narrowed it down to either getting a gargoyle gecko or a corn snake. I did hours and hours of research on both, including playing with the labs milk snake “Fred” before I decided to get a corn. Ashlie and I bought tickets to Repticon, Atlanta to look at specimens and get our own there.
We started our adventure to Atlanta last Friday, and promptly decided that all road trips should require a Dairy Queen stop. We saw a sign for one just past the GA border, got lost trying to find it, and arrived at it 20 minutes later. It was the Dairy Queen from Hell. It tried to present itself as though it were an actual, sit down restaurant. This atmosphere was killed by the fact that every table was dirty, the place was full of people but was eerily quiet, and there was a huge garden bed full of dusty fake plants taking up the center of the seating area. They insisted on bringing out food to our table, which would have been great if they hadn’t given my food to someone else. I finally got my food to go so I could eat and still drive. The ranch dressing came in a non-descript white container and looked like semen. Ashlie and I screamed when I opened it, closed it, and did not reopen it.
I think I know where they're getting their recipes.
A lot of strange things happened that weekend. I got lost about 8 times driving different places, which ended up making me spend close to 15 hours driving in a 72 hour period. I also couldn’t find a single corn snake at the convention, and after asking around discovered that corn snakes are illegal in GA. Apparently, it’s been illegal to buy or sell native non-venomous reptiles in GA since the 60’s.
I was crushed, but kept looking at snakes just in case. Ashlie found a baby gargoyle gecko that she fell in love with but was reluctant to get. It took a bunch of convincing for her to decide to finally get it, and named him/her Gaius/Caprica (not sure of the gender yet).
Note the awesome hotel towel we "borrowed" for substrate.
I was underwhelmed and disappointed with the snakes I was handling until a baby ball python caught my eye. He wasn’t any special morph, but he was a pretty golden brown and black color. When I handled him he was alert and curious, and I fell in love. After 3 hours of handling pythons, milk snakes, king snakes, and boas he is the only one who stood out to me. I bought him, and we were on our merry way.
I took a ton of pictures at the con, but haven't had a chance to put them on the computer yet. Dice, Joe, Dan, Ashlie and I were all there, and I think I managed to get pictures of everyone but me. Plus, I got tons of pictures of all the awesome reptiles. I'll post them later.
We had the interesting task of smuggling our new pets into the hotel room and then making said room hospitable for reptiles with no one noticing. We got them in ok, set up small tanks for them, and cranked up the heat in the room to make the little guys happy. We turned down the heat at night so it was cool enough for us to sleep, but I got worried about my snake and pulled him out to make sure he was warm. He saw the TV and pulled himself into an S shape and hissed at it, which had to be the most adorable thing I've ever seen. Poor little guy is so young, he thinks everything is trying to eat him.
The next day when we left we had to smuggle the gecko and snake back out to the car and past cleaning ladies. It involved a lot of peeking around corners and sprinting. Ashlie’s words were, “I feel like I’m doing something naughty.” XD
Another challenge that owning the snake presented was the knowledge that Max is scared of reptiles. I decided about a couple weeks ago that the best way to combat this was exposure therapy, so I keep changing his desktop to pictures of snakes when he isn’t looking. I also thought that if I got a snake and named it an endearing name, it would make the situation less threatening. I compiled a list of names and charted Max’s terror level, 1 being not scary and 10 being “pissed my pants.”
1. Tiberius: Captain Kirk’s middle name. Nerdy, and potentially acceptable.
2 . Tymora: Goddess of luck in Faerun.
4. Cassandra: Cool name, but has that “SSSsss” sound in it, which could evoke a terror response.
5. Lucien: Sort of sinister sounding, but not too bad. One of my favorite characters from Oblivion.
7. Shar: “Bad things will happen if we bring this snake into our house.”
10. Nagini: “OH GOD IT’S GOING TO EAT ME.”
I fail to understand his terror.
Luckily, Daniel thought of a name immediately: “Artemis Entreri”, Max’s favorite character out of RA Salvatore’s books. I’d say the name is about a 4 on the “Max Terror Scale.” Max actually held him on Tuesday, which was remarkably earlier than I thought he was going to. Luckily he held him before we fed him last night. In a flash Artie grabbed the dead mouse from my tongs and constricted it for a good ten minutes before unhinging his jaw and swallowing it. Max's eyes were huge the whole time, and whenever I asked him if he was okay he just replied, "This is so metal."
Pictured: Adorable and Metal in the shape of a burrito.
*TLDR: I now own a snake, his name is Artemis, and he is awesome.