I was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba (Canada). Though after just a few years
I moved to New Hampshire, just north of Boston. I moved again, to Wilmington, North Carolina a few years later. While I had always been fascinated
by animals in general, it wasn't until I moved to Wilmington
that I really got hooked on reptiles. I was 10 years old when I got
my first reptile, a Yellow-belly slider turtle that I found while walking
around a swamp. Soon I had 3 turtles and my bedroom was steadily turning
into a little oasis of native wildlife. Though I soon became interested
in many of the exotic reptiles that I saw at the local pet-stores.
I soon found out that not to far away was a reptile expo and so after
much pleading, my parents and I made the trip. Once I entered the show,
it just about blown away! The diversity of species was just incredible
for someone who was just used to seeing the typical pet-shop species.
I ended up picking up a Bearded Dragon from this show, which I ended
up keeping until it passed on from old age late last year ( November,
2009). Soon I was needing a mate for my lone Bearded Dragon and one
thing left to another and soon my bedroom was overrun with tanks housing
everything from bullfrog tadpoles from the local creek to Uromastyx
lizards from Morocco. Also during this time I was volunteering at the local North Carolina at Fort Fisher giving educational talks about reptiles as well as caring for the reptiles they had. I also volunteered at the local Childrens Museum as they too had a reptile exhibit. Also I was lucky enough to be right down the road from Dean Ripa's brand new Serpentarium. One day while I was browsing the reptile section
at the pet store, I came across what I later learned was a crested
gecko. After doing more research on them, I discovered that they could
be kept at room temperature and be fed baby food and crickets. Note
this was before the explosion of information that is currently available
on these geckos. So after searching the few reptile websites about
them I managed to locate a breeder with a gecko in my small price range
and asked my mom if I could get it for my birthday. She said yes, and
the rest is history!
My collection has grown rather fast and steady over the past few years,
and now I keep and breed over 50 different species of geckos. It
is a full time job in itself just feeding, misting, and maintaining
cages, let alone the whole "business" side of things
such as maintaining this website, emails, shipping, and keeping track
of all the in's and out's. However I love working with
reptiles so even though it is more work I would still much prefer
getting to work with my reptiles everyday as opposed to having to
work at a normal job. I don't consider myself a business, nor
do I want to. I feel once one starts viewing their animals as "products"
they lose sight on what originally got them interested in the animals
to begin with and don't view the animals based on the animal
alone. I pride myself on personally caring for all of my animals,
I don't have any employees (though I could use help sometimes),
and so I am responsible for every aspect of my collection. My overall
goal is to keep species I like, and try and do my part at maintaining
and sustaining a captive population. I am more into the conservation
side of things than I am in producing the latest morph. If there
was a way that I could just be funded for providing animals for release
into the wild I would do it in a heartbeat as I think that is one
of the highest callings one could be involved in. However this will
probably never happen due to the complications involved in introducing
captive animals to a wild scenario, so in the meantime I rely on
selling my geckos to other dedicated breeders who will further help
sustain the species. I don't wish to breed geckos for a living,
at least not in the near future, I am currently attending college
full time studying Biology and so I hope to one day apply what I
learn to studying reptiles in a wild setting, and then use that information
and apply it to captive situations.
I hope you enjoy looking around
the website and find the information on here interesting and if not
even a little amusing to read!
