Reptile Ramblings From the Beginning

Hi! My name is Tom and I am a Herp Nut. I started out as one of those 10 year old boys who came home from a romp in the woods with a pocket full of frogs, salamanders, snakes and toads. My poor mother never knew what would be swimming in my bathtub in the basement when she ventured down to clean. I found out early that my mother was not on a first name basis with my reptilian friends. One day I asked her if she had seen Mac, my missing Red-sided Garter Snake and received a glare that I can still visualize today. My father told her it was a stage and that I would grow out of it. He may be right, but now I am fifty some years old and still look forward to spring, when the herps come out of hibernation. In the meantime I have been employed with the US Forest Service and the Army for many years as a wildlife biologist and in 1996 my wife (another Herp Nut) and I started our own biological consulting business and now we get paid for playing with those same frogs, salamanders and snakes I played with as a 10 year old. How sweet is that!! Now we are herpetologists. Not just herpetologists, but herpetoculturist's. We not only work with reptiles and amphibians in the field, we work with captive breeding of a number of species. I no longer keep snakes in the bathtub, but I do have a modern reptile room housing numerous species in vivarium settings. I also have three large outdoor turtle and tortoise enclosures housing some 40+ individuals. All of this and I live in Portal, Arizona, a Mecca for any reptile lover and I have a reptile blog of my own to ramble on about the herps we see here in Portal and the goings ons in our reptile room. Life is good!!