Okay hear me out, not a reptile but occurred because of one.
When I was working a long-term care CNA job, I had a coworker who loved exotic pet keeping just as much as I did. One day, she was venting about her snake not eating the live food provided to it. I didn’t think much of this because snakes are picky and they’ll eventually stop hunger striking when they’re ready— figured this was just a bs conversation filler while we wipe asses for a living. However, two days later, my coworker walks into our work building with a fucking rat cage and hands it to me. There was a white baby rat inside and she proceeds to say “I got annoyed, so I rehomed the snake. If you don’t take this rat then I’ll have to euthanize it.” My mind was absolutely boggled, but I ended up taking home the meanest rat that day and she lived to be almost 4 years old.
And this is why we feed a frozen diet to our noodle friends 🥲
All my reptile stories are pretty boring but i did find a ferret on a city street in Massachusetts that became my best little buddy. So I’m going to chill here with the rat story lol.
Rodents are just as lovable! Despite my rat being an absolute devil, she was the best little friend I could have had. She lived more than 10x her estimated lifespan for a feeder rat, and even my dad (who hates pets) was invested in her 🥰
I also got to see first hand why feeding reptiles live food is a terrible idea. It should really only be done in emergencies, which is rare in itself.
I’ve had rats and mice! I love them. They can be the sweetest and they’re very smart. I’ve had so many species, i used to rescue and foster a lot and I’m not picky. I had mice for years and the rats were elderly when i took them in (they had a very loving owner, just some really bad circumstances for the owner) so i didn’t have them long but they were good babies.
I don’t do live feedings and i hate when people argue that it’s just natural. There’s nothing natural about a man made enclosure making escape impossible for prey lol. I agree that they’re acceptable for emergencies but that’s why i haven’t had any pet snakes in a while. I LOVE snakes but i don’t want to have to feed any mice at all. I like mice. And unfortunately, those are the only snakes that can live well as pets.
I do have two rough green snakes, but they’re rescues that I took from someone else who lost or killed (accidentally) the other 4 🤬, i don’t live in a safe area to release them bc we get too cold for them, and i have no idea where they were bought from (not that i would send them back there anyways). They just have a giant bio enclosure to themselves with lots of plants and hides, and the bugs live in there with them. I only ever bother them to change the water or add bugs/calcium powder. I don’t expect them to live long in captivity but I’m just trying to give them a safe space to live out their days unbothered. I don’t really consider them pets, just wild animals that got completely screwed over in life and I’m just trying to limit the damage. I feel so bad for them, i wish i lived somewhere to release them.
Edit for typo.
I had a similar experience, had a BP that would only eat live Rats. Well one day he decided he didn’t want to eat the Rat I bought him, so I made up a separate little cage for him(the Rat)and just figured I’d keep him for a week and try again. Well over the week of caring for the Rat, I kinda got attached to him, he was super cool and super sweet, would climb right up on me, and sit and watch TV with me, and would have felt like a horrible human for feeding it to my Snake, or even taking it back to exchange for a new Rat, because I knew his fate would be the same. So I kept it, he lived right next to the Snake that was supposed to eat him for almost 3 years until he finally got sick and gave up the ghost. I used to call him Dinner, just to remind him where he came from.
I visit pet stores in my area and I like one in particular. I was visiting it one night and it was just a bizarre evening. I sat down with a recently abandoned baby bci and lost track of time. I think it was almost an hour later when my wife informed me we could get the snake. I didn't even intend to ask. As we had been there talking and working out the details I had been watching a little girl play with one of the largest bearded dragons I've ever seen. She was laying on the ground with it and it was chasing her around the shop. The shop boards pets so we thought that big lizard was her pet she came to pick it up. Turns out it was an abandoned dragon and that little girl met it the same day. Even the store owner was shocked that the dragon was playing with her like they knew each other. Before I adopted my baby boa, she adopted her giant female bearded dragon. That dragon got carried out like a big stuffed toy by this maybe 10 year old little girl. The dragon was missing about a quarter of its tail and was older but it looked so happy to be with that girl and she was beaming just holding her new friend. I might have loved that day for me getting to rescue my baby after it was abandoned... But I think the better story is that sad old bearded dragon finding a child to play with her. It followed her like a puppy... (Squees!)
I am thankful to have experienced it with my wife. It was barely a thing that registered with us until we talked about it later. At the time we both assumed the girl already owned the dragon. It wasn't until we mentioned it when we were leaving that the shop owner told us it was a blind adoption. The girl just wanted a lizard and that she liked that old dragon the most. The owner had misty eyes and a big smile when he informed us they went home together after meeting as strangers.
I just wanted to get something chill to hang out in a smallish bioactive terrarium, like a giant millipede or something, but my mom and my therapist encouraged me to get a more personable pet and one manic episode and $1k later I have a bearded dragon. Eventually I tried making him a bioactive enclosure, another $1k later, and basically every plant died because the soil was too poor. Womp womp
I had a friend who had a friend that found a crested gecko in their garage in Texas. The friend tried to find its owners but no luck, so she mailed him to me overnight and I've had him for 3 years now.
Okay, I'm not sure if you'd count this as bizarre but my gecko was originally a office pet. Office was in Florida so when a hurricane came by the office would close. I offered to take him home to take care of him and never brought them back.
They didn't seem to mind too much. Honestly he wasn't getting the care he needed in the office but I was doing the best I could with the supplies they had. I had a makeshift box that would loosely go over his tank since the lights never shut off.
Now he lives in the right size enclosure, has tons of places to hide, a proper day night cycle and has an auto mister. How does he repay me? He has become a horny grumpy biter. But I still love him :)
At a teaching conference, I was gifted a hermit crab. When I got home, I read that they didn’t like to be alone, so I went to the pet store to buy it a friend. While I was waiting for some help, I noticed this baby iguana staring me down. It was the cutest thing. When someone finally showed up, I asked her if I can see that iguana. She put her in my palm and her little hands wrapped around my thumb and she just sat there so chill. A mom and her kid asked to see an iguana and when they handed it to the kid, it ran off and went down the aisle. The mom looked at me, pointed at my iguana and said we want that one. I immediately said no, she is mine! She chilled in my hand for the entire ride home. I had her for 11 years until she got liver disease. She was the best girl! I could go on with other stories, but I’ll pause for now. 💚
Well for about 4 or 5 years, she lived in my classroom on the weekdays. The kids LOVED her!!!! She was rarely in her enclosure. She would relax on them as they did their work. Some students really connected with her so much so that when she was not in the classroom, their behavior would change. They didn’t flip out when she pooped they would just clean up after her w/o complaint. They would save grapes from their lunch and give it to her. I had some who made her dinner every day. She never once whipped them with her tail or bit them. She was the most chill iguana ever!
I lived in South Florida for a long long time.
I was over at a friend's house for a BBQ when the neighbor's dog wouldn't stop barking at their back deck. The neighbor would pull the dog away and it would run right back to a spot and bark.
We offered to help look what was under it. The deck was too low to crawl under, so we decided to pull up a board and look. After pulling up a few random boards, my friend (who is deathly afraid of snakes) screams and runs.
I glance in that spot, and there is an Indian rock python coiled up. He was about 5ft and the angriest little thing.
I had him for about 4 years after that, and he never calmed down. I had to move away, so I found a good home for him with a collector.
not a reptile, but our american green tree frog hitched a ride on a delivery truck. it was coming from somewhere on the east coast to a dive shop next to the aquarium store i used to work at here in phoenix.
my manager saw him and couldn't just leave him on that truck to fry, so he took him inside and let him hang out on the bonsai tree over one of the aquarium systems. we didn't have anything to feed the poor guy, so we needed to get him out of there asap. he came home with me the next day.
it's going on 7 years now that we've had milo. he's a total goofball and everyone loves him.
I have one~ I am a realtor, at the home inspection the inspector opens the electrical panel and we all see something slither up - yes up into the wiring. It looked a bit iridescent to me, first thought, someone’s lost baby ball python or something similar. Q the buyer screaming she will not buy the house bc of the snake and it needs to be killed. The home inspector tries to grab it and he cannot get a grip and it goes up into the wall with the wiring. So I tell her I have to come back to collect the radon test and I will get it then and it will be ok. 2 days later I take my daughter with me to help me catch it. TG she is up for an adventure and what better mom daughter activity than to save an animal! We get it, call it Stanley and it looked like a corn snake - not common up here in New England as far as I know. Se we get the whole set up for it, I did call animal control and a local reptile rescue and no one was missing a snake. Last bit, he would not eat so I went on one of the snake boards and asked for advice and included a picture - SURPRISE ~ we have an endangered local snake who needs to go home fast! So we released him back into a wooded protected area to be free. After a few weeks of watching my daughter and me pout about no snake, my husband said fine, get a snake but it cannot eat the dogs or get big enough to squeeze the children. We went to the next reptile show and picked up our pewter Corn snake who is still with us at 13 years old.
No idea why you felt the need to take home a wild animal rather than releasing it back outside where it belongs. Kinda to late to release it at this point considering that you've had it in captivity for 2 years now, but in the future, you really should just put animals back where they belong.
Dude chill he was a kid who found a lizard, brought it home, fell in love with it, built it a habitat, loved it for years, and developed a lifelong love of reptiles. Is that really a bad thing?
It's how a lot of not most of us got started.
Yes taking animals from the wild is bad for a multitude of reasons but, the one he found was an anole. The green anole is super duper common throughout its range. Basically all the other anoles found in the US are introduced. Also these lizards are sold for super low prices to people who never cared about them in the first place, receive terrible care, die of neglect, or get released and add to the introduced species problem. We have no idea which category this anole belongs to. Furthermore it was in a school. At many schools across the world that random lizard would be beaten to death with a broom, stomped flat by adults or children, or die of thirst in a glue trap. Most of that is 100% legal too because it's a wild nuisance/pest that wondered into an occupied building.
I think being taken and made into a well cared for pet is one of the few positive ways things could have gone for that lizard.
Yet u want reptiles but don’t even know if the anole in question is invasive or not? Actually taking it from the wild would be beneficial on a basic ecological level. U should study ecology and invasive species instead of phylogeny to break down taxonomy
Do you know if its invasive? Should I just take every single animal I ever see out of the wild on the chance that it might be invasive? Yeah, invasive animals aren't a good thing, but what do you think is gonna happen if everyone just immediately assumes that every single lizard they ever see is invasive and take it home? OP made no indication that it was invasive, so I assumed that it wasn't, because why would I assume that automatically? And also, kind of a hot take here, but what effect do you actually think taking one single hypothetically invasive anole out of the wild is gonna achieve? They aren't like turtles where taking a single individual out of the wild actually has a huge impact on their population, they are anoles. If you take one out of the environment, that's barely even gonna make a dent in their wild population. If you actually want to affect something, you need to take them out of the environment on a much larger scale. So the only thing that taking a **single** invasive anole out of the wild is actually gonna achieve is just stressing the thing out by completely uprooting everything that it has known for its entire life, and potentially killing it from said stress (or at the very least, making its life worse as it yearns for freedom).
Assumptions like u made blaming the person and shaming him. Dude is probably young. Heading straight at him is only going to make him not listen and ignore any advice u then give. U can’t force people to take ur advice. U lessen ur chance by jumping right at them. And since u do mention why should it matter he only took 1 individual out. Other choice is to kill it. But u can have compassion on an animal that others would kill because the law lets them. Also yearns for freedom? Ur anthropomorphizing the lizard let’s be so real here. An anole is going to live a better life in captivity. Let’s not forget this is a reptile subreddit. All of our animals come from those that were ripped from the wild. We can only enjoy our animals because someone ripped their ancestors out of their native range. Do u think they yearned for their freedom too or do u only care about what u want instead of the big picture. Lots of semantics
https://myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/profiles/amphibians/cane-toad/ florida law completely stops canes from being relocated so I’m really not sure where the 99% sure came from tbh tbh. That’s how all invasive species are dealt with. Especially in florida. Green iguana, Burmese python, African rocks, lion fish etc. tegu my favorite lizard same exact ruling
I was contacted by a friend who had a friend who needed to downsize her reptile collection. My friend says “I’m wondering if you know anyone who wants a bearded dragon or leopard geckos.”
I did, in fact, know someone, it me. (I took the beardie, another friend took the geckos.)
My grandfather used to work at a sportswear store in a large mall. One day, a tiny painted turtle wandered in through a back door, and he found her just roaming the back stock room. She was a few weeks old and almost a mile away from the nearest body of water. My grandfather brought her home, I named her Lola, and I spent the next twelve years putting obscene amounts of time and money into that little wet dinosaur.
When my husband and I moved into a tiny trailer, we had to give Lola up. There was just no way that the floor could support 2,000lb of water and stone. I surrendered her to a wildlife center, and she is living it up in a large pond on their property. She will be 18 years old this summer!
A few years ago I was working at a local pet store. I had some snakes at the time. While my care hadn't been the best at the time, but it was better than could be expected at most pet stores. This one was much better than chains at least. We had a ball python sent to us wayyyyy too young that had a number of minor health problems. Despite some vet visits, they got worse and worse. He eventually lost both of his eye caps to a double eye infection, contracted mites, had a bad shed, and somehow got a large cut on his side. He also had never eaten unassisted in his life, although I don't know exactly how old he was when he was shipped to us.
I worked in the fish department so I didn't get to follow or help with his treatment but at this point, the manager over the animals asked me to take it. I wasn't planning on getting any more snakes but I knew this guy was a goner if I didn't take him in. I started learning everything I could on rehabbing him. I was able to get his mites under control and get him hydrated relatively quickly and in less than 3 weeks he ate unassisted for the first time in his life. Since I got him, he has gone from a roughly 65 gram emaciated ball python who had never eaten on his own living in a 20 long quarantine tank with paper towels to a 1300 gram happy and healthy snake living in a 4x2x2 that never misses a meal. He also motivated me to learn and improve my husbandry for all of my other snakes who have all benefited from it.
An unexpected rescue in the worst of conditions ended up helping me and my entire collection and has flourished since I took him in. I also was able to pass on what I learned to the pet store which was very open and receptive to it. I haven't worked there for a while but I can still see the things I learned and passed on being used.
Here is an album of his journey from day 1 through just last week. NSFW warning, there are a couple feeding pictures and a video.
https://imgur.com/a/y4INISi
I was part of a reptile rehoming Facebook page. A woman posted a baby bearded dragon, and I pounced on it.
Turns out, she bought the beardie for her 8 yr old kid who thought he wanted it, but ended up being terrified of it and not wanting the poor lizard.
They bought the beardie and his whole setup on Thursday; he was in my house by Saturday. Can’t imagine the life he would’ve had if that punk kid kept him.
I snuck pet a herd of baby cresties. I got caught. And got reprimanded. Anyway. Next day I put my sweater on that I was wearing to go out again. And there was a crestie on it.. . She's going on 2ish, I'd assume.
Not a reptile. My husband and I work in a warehouse. One day, he gets a call that someone needs a mouse taken outside from the trap. He assumed it was a catch and release trap. It wasn't. It was a spring trap. Somehow, the mouse had survived uninjured. It was January and my husband refused to this poor lucky mouse out in the snow. So he chilled in a box until we got off work and went to the pet store to get what we needed. This was the start of 2 years of pet mice.
My ex roommate lied about letting me get a cat so I would move in with him but he said reptiles were fine
I skimmed craigslist, found a ball python, did some research before deciding to pick him up
moved out 2 months later because he was WFH before it was cool as a cover for being a drug dealer and I was nervous about playing dumb enough to police if he ever got raided
still have the snake, it'll be 6 years with him in August
Although what Youtube didn't tell me about getting a snake off craigslist is bad husbandry and stress can cause a wobble. His heat lamp wasn't on a dimmer, there was no thermostat, and his tank was caked in Great Dane slobber
My senior year of high school my younger sister showed up with a ball python one day and said, “hey, I tried to call you. I got you a snake from a friend who didn’t want it anymore”..sure, I guess? 😅. I hid it in my bedroom closet (in a terrarium mind you), and kept him from my mom for 6 months before she found out. I never realized how strong they were, and he weaseled his way out of my closet one day while I was at work and gave my mom an absolute heart attack lol.. his name was Dale
I went with my mother in law to a local plant shop located in a big craft market. They specialized in indoor and terrarium plants. I had purchased plants for my terrarium before from there.
Anyway we walk in and the clerk tells us they just had a big shipment brought in by their owners from south Florida. So we are browsing and my mother in law buys a couple plants. The clerk calls out and asks me if I'm buying any plants today. I respond that "no, I am just looking today because my current terrarium is fully planted." She excitedly responds with "You have a terrarium?! What do you have in it?"
So given the chance to gush about my new favorite hobby I pull up pictures and tell her all about my setup and the animals inside including my mourning geckos. "You have lizards!!!" even more excited, "I have a lizard!" Me misunderstanding and thinking she's about to tell me about her pet I ask what kind it is. No no she means she caught a lizard while processing the new inventory. She has no idea what kind it is and before we walked in she was just starting to look up any rescues to take it. Next thing I know she's pressing a Tupperware container into my hands and asking if I knew what the lizard was and if it was local. Being as it was a penny sized brown anole I could easily tell her that they were not local and were in fact invasive to Florida.
Finding out it wasn't a local species she asked if I would take it saying it would be a big relief to her for it to go to an experienced home. So I took her home while my mother in law tried to get her head wrapped around what she knew happened to me (aka people just randomly giving me animals) but had never witnessed first hand.
Twiggy has been with us for about a year now and just recently got upgraded from her nursery jar to her big girl enclosure.
Edited to add that since then I've been offered and turned down 2 leopard geckos (they went to a friend instead) and will be taking in a beardie next Friday.
Well I had my dad convinced to get a ball python cause he doesn't really care about the pets I have he just pays for them (I mostly pay for them at 19 yrs old now but he still pitches in lol). But we had to convince my mom, so while she was drunk I was like hmm I should convince her to let me get a snake and I showed her a pastel banana BP and she fell in love... She then proceeded to pay $275 right then and there (which is very out of character for her ☠️) to get him + the setup the next day 😂. They've since split but I now have 4 BPs (my dad got the other 3 for me) and 2 cresties that I got myself and I'm setting my eyes on a garter colony.
My grandpa went to work he had to grab a box after his co-workers captured a lizard in the warehouse. That hitch-hiked all the from south Florida to Tampa in a Pepsi truck. And he took him home since nobody else wanted him.
Okay hear me out, not a reptile but occurred because of one. When I was working a long-term care CNA job, I had a coworker who loved exotic pet keeping just as much as I did. One day, she was venting about her snake not eating the live food provided to it. I didn’t think much of this because snakes are picky and they’ll eventually stop hunger striking when they’re ready— figured this was just a bs conversation filler while we wipe asses for a living. However, two days later, my coworker walks into our work building with a fucking rat cage and hands it to me. There was a white baby rat inside and she proceeds to say “I got annoyed, so I rehomed the snake. If you don’t take this rat then I’ll have to euthanize it.” My mind was absolutely boggled, but I ended up taking home the meanest rat that day and she lived to be almost 4 years old. And this is why we feed a frozen diet to our noodle friends 🥲
All my reptile stories are pretty boring but i did find a ferret on a city street in Massachusetts that became my best little buddy. So I’m going to chill here with the rat story lol.
Rodents are just as lovable! Despite my rat being an absolute devil, she was the best little friend I could have had. She lived more than 10x her estimated lifespan for a feeder rat, and even my dad (who hates pets) was invested in her 🥰 I also got to see first hand why feeding reptiles live food is a terrible idea. It should really only be done in emergencies, which is rare in itself.
I’ve had rats and mice! I love them. They can be the sweetest and they’re very smart. I’ve had so many species, i used to rescue and foster a lot and I’m not picky. I had mice for years and the rats were elderly when i took them in (they had a very loving owner, just some really bad circumstances for the owner) so i didn’t have them long but they were good babies. I don’t do live feedings and i hate when people argue that it’s just natural. There’s nothing natural about a man made enclosure making escape impossible for prey lol. I agree that they’re acceptable for emergencies but that’s why i haven’t had any pet snakes in a while. I LOVE snakes but i don’t want to have to feed any mice at all. I like mice. And unfortunately, those are the only snakes that can live well as pets. I do have two rough green snakes, but they’re rescues that I took from someone else who lost or killed (accidentally) the other 4 🤬, i don’t live in a safe area to release them bc we get too cold for them, and i have no idea where they were bought from (not that i would send them back there anyways). They just have a giant bio enclosure to themselves with lots of plants and hides, and the bugs live in there with them. I only ever bother them to change the water or add bugs/calcium powder. I don’t expect them to live long in captivity but I’m just trying to give them a safe space to live out their days unbothered. I don’t really consider them pets, just wild animals that got completely screwed over in life and I’m just trying to limit the damage. I feel so bad for them, i wish i lived somewhere to release them. Edit for typo.
Mother Earth sees what you have done for her innocent creatures and wants to thank you for your service.
I had a similar experience, had a BP that would only eat live Rats. Well one day he decided he didn’t want to eat the Rat I bought him, so I made up a separate little cage for him(the Rat)and just figured I’d keep him for a week and try again. Well over the week of caring for the Rat, I kinda got attached to him, he was super cool and super sweet, would climb right up on me, and sit and watch TV with me, and would have felt like a horrible human for feeding it to my Snake, or even taking it back to exchange for a new Rat, because I knew his fate would be the same. So I kept it, he lived right next to the Snake that was supposed to eat him for almost 3 years until he finally got sick and gave up the ghost. I used to call him Dinner, just to remind him where he came from.
I visit pet stores in my area and I like one in particular. I was visiting it one night and it was just a bizarre evening. I sat down with a recently abandoned baby bci and lost track of time. I think it was almost an hour later when my wife informed me we could get the snake. I didn't even intend to ask. As we had been there talking and working out the details I had been watching a little girl play with one of the largest bearded dragons I've ever seen. She was laying on the ground with it and it was chasing her around the shop. The shop boards pets so we thought that big lizard was her pet she came to pick it up. Turns out it was an abandoned dragon and that little girl met it the same day. Even the store owner was shocked that the dragon was playing with her like they knew each other. Before I adopted my baby boa, she adopted her giant female bearded dragon. That dragon got carried out like a big stuffed toy by this maybe 10 year old little girl. The dragon was missing about a quarter of its tail and was older but it looked so happy to be with that girl and she was beaming just holding her new friend. I might have loved that day for me getting to rescue my baby after it was abandoned... But I think the better story is that sad old bearded dragon finding a child to play with her. It followed her like a puppy... (Squees!)
Pixar movie moment right here 😁
I am thankful to have experienced it with my wife. It was barely a thing that registered with us until we talked about it later. At the time we both assumed the girl already owned the dragon. It wasn't until we mentioned it when we were leaving that the shop owner told us it was a blind adoption. The girl just wanted a lizard and that she liked that old dragon the most. The owner had misty eyes and a big smile when he informed us they went home together after meeting as strangers.
I just wanted to get something chill to hang out in a smallish bioactive terrarium, like a giant millipede or something, but my mom and my therapist encouraged me to get a more personable pet and one manic episode and $1k later I have a bearded dragon. Eventually I tried making him a bioactive enclosure, another $1k later, and basically every plant died because the soil was too poor. Womp womp
Litterally the meme where it's like Dandelions: I will grow in this crack in the concrete! Other plants: I'm allergic to tap water :(
I had a friend who had a friend that found a crested gecko in their garage in Texas. The friend tried to find its owners but no luck, so she mailed him to me overnight and I've had him for 3 years now.
Okay, I'm not sure if you'd count this as bizarre but my gecko was originally a office pet. Office was in Florida so when a hurricane came by the office would close. I offered to take him home to take care of him and never brought them back. They didn't seem to mind too much. Honestly he wasn't getting the care he needed in the office but I was doing the best I could with the supplies they had. I had a makeshift box that would loosely go over his tank since the lights never shut off. Now he lives in the right size enclosure, has tons of places to hide, a proper day night cycle and has an auto mister. How does he repay me? He has become a horny grumpy biter. But I still love him :)
At a teaching conference, I was gifted a hermit crab. When I got home, I read that they didn’t like to be alone, so I went to the pet store to buy it a friend. While I was waiting for some help, I noticed this baby iguana staring me down. It was the cutest thing. When someone finally showed up, I asked her if I can see that iguana. She put her in my palm and her little hands wrapped around my thumb and she just sat there so chill. A mom and her kid asked to see an iguana and when they handed it to the kid, it ran off and went down the aisle. The mom looked at me, pointed at my iguana and said we want that one. I immediately said no, she is mine! She chilled in my hand for the entire ride home. I had her for 11 years until she got liver disease. She was the best girl! I could go on with other stories, but I’ll pause for now. 💚
No, please go on!
Well for about 4 or 5 years, she lived in my classroom on the weekdays. The kids LOVED her!!!! She was rarely in her enclosure. She would relax on them as they did their work. Some students really connected with her so much so that when she was not in the classroom, their behavior would change. They didn’t flip out when she pooped they would just clean up after her w/o complaint. They would save grapes from their lunch and give it to her. I had some who made her dinner every day. She never once whipped them with her tail or bit them. She was the most chill iguana ever!
I lived in South Florida for a long long time. I was over at a friend's house for a BBQ when the neighbor's dog wouldn't stop barking at their back deck. The neighbor would pull the dog away and it would run right back to a spot and bark. We offered to help look what was under it. The deck was too low to crawl under, so we decided to pull up a board and look. After pulling up a few random boards, my friend (who is deathly afraid of snakes) screams and runs. I glance in that spot, and there is an Indian rock python coiled up. He was about 5ft and the angriest little thing. I had him for about 4 years after that, and he never calmed down. I had to move away, so I found a good home for him with a collector.
not a reptile, but our american green tree frog hitched a ride on a delivery truck. it was coming from somewhere on the east coast to a dive shop next to the aquarium store i used to work at here in phoenix. my manager saw him and couldn't just leave him on that truck to fry, so he took him inside and let him hang out on the bonsai tree over one of the aquarium systems. we didn't have anything to feed the poor guy, so we needed to get him out of there asap. he came home with me the next day. it's going on 7 years now that we've had milo. he's a total goofball and everyone loves him.
I have one~ I am a realtor, at the home inspection the inspector opens the electrical panel and we all see something slither up - yes up into the wiring. It looked a bit iridescent to me, first thought, someone’s lost baby ball python or something similar. Q the buyer screaming she will not buy the house bc of the snake and it needs to be killed. The home inspector tries to grab it and he cannot get a grip and it goes up into the wall with the wiring. So I tell her I have to come back to collect the radon test and I will get it then and it will be ok. 2 days later I take my daughter with me to help me catch it. TG she is up for an adventure and what better mom daughter activity than to save an animal! We get it, call it Stanley and it looked like a corn snake - not common up here in New England as far as I know. Se we get the whole set up for it, I did call animal control and a local reptile rescue and no one was missing a snake. Last bit, he would not eat so I went on one of the snake boards and asked for advice and included a picture - SURPRISE ~ we have an endangered local snake who needs to go home fast! So we released him back into a wooded protected area to be free. After a few weeks of watching my daughter and me pout about no snake, my husband said fine, get a snake but it cannot eat the dogs or get big enough to squeeze the children. We went to the next reptile show and picked up our pewter Corn snake who is still with us at 13 years old.
No idea why you felt the need to take home a wild animal rather than releasing it back outside where it belongs. Kinda to late to release it at this point considering that you've had it in captivity for 2 years now, but in the future, you really should just put animals back where they belong.
I know, and I normally do :) but he was a baby and in my school, I planned to but got attached to him quick haha
Doesn't really matter if you get attached to them or not, wild animals belong in the wild, not in your house.
Dude chill he was a kid who found a lizard, brought it home, fell in love with it, built it a habitat, loved it for years, and developed a lifelong love of reptiles. Is that really a bad thing? It's how a lot of not most of us got started. Yes taking animals from the wild is bad for a multitude of reasons but, the one he found was an anole. The green anole is super duper common throughout its range. Basically all the other anoles found in the US are introduced. Also these lizards are sold for super low prices to people who never cared about them in the first place, receive terrible care, die of neglect, or get released and add to the introduced species problem. We have no idea which category this anole belongs to. Furthermore it was in a school. At many schools across the world that random lizard would be beaten to death with a broom, stomped flat by adults or children, or die of thirst in a glue trap. Most of that is 100% legal too because it's a wild nuisance/pest that wondered into an occupied building. I think being taken and made into a well cared for pet is one of the few positive ways things could have gone for that lizard.
Yet u want reptiles but don’t even know if the anole in question is invasive or not? Actually taking it from the wild would be beneficial on a basic ecological level. U should study ecology and invasive species instead of phylogeny to break down taxonomy
Do you know if its invasive? Should I just take every single animal I ever see out of the wild on the chance that it might be invasive? Yeah, invasive animals aren't a good thing, but what do you think is gonna happen if everyone just immediately assumes that every single lizard they ever see is invasive and take it home? OP made no indication that it was invasive, so I assumed that it wasn't, because why would I assume that automatically? And also, kind of a hot take here, but what effect do you actually think taking one single hypothetically invasive anole out of the wild is gonna achieve? They aren't like turtles where taking a single individual out of the wild actually has a huge impact on their population, they are anoles. If you take one out of the environment, that's barely even gonna make a dent in their wild population. If you actually want to affect something, you need to take them out of the environment on a much larger scale. So the only thing that taking a **single** invasive anole out of the wild is actually gonna achieve is just stressing the thing out by completely uprooting everything that it has known for its entire life, and potentially killing it from said stress (or at the very least, making its life worse as it yearns for freedom).
Assumptions like u made blaming the person and shaming him. Dude is probably young. Heading straight at him is only going to make him not listen and ignore any advice u then give. U can’t force people to take ur advice. U lessen ur chance by jumping right at them. And since u do mention why should it matter he only took 1 individual out. Other choice is to kill it. But u can have compassion on an animal that others would kill because the law lets them. Also yearns for freedom? Ur anthropomorphizing the lizard let’s be so real here. An anole is going to live a better life in captivity. Let’s not forget this is a reptile subreddit. All of our animals come from those that were ripped from the wild. We can only enjoy our animals because someone ripped their ancestors out of their native range. Do u think they yearned for their freedom too or do u only care about what u want instead of the big picture. Lots of semantics
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https://myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/profiles/amphibians/cane-toad/ florida law completely stops canes from being relocated so I’m really not sure where the 99% sure came from tbh tbh. That’s how all invasive species are dealt with. Especially in florida. Green iguana, Burmese python, African rocks, lion fish etc. tegu my favorite lizard same exact ruling
I was contacted by a friend who had a friend who needed to downsize her reptile collection. My friend says “I’m wondering if you know anyone who wants a bearded dragon or leopard geckos.” I did, in fact, know someone, it me. (I took the beardie, another friend took the geckos.)
My grandfather used to work at a sportswear store in a large mall. One day, a tiny painted turtle wandered in through a back door, and he found her just roaming the back stock room. She was a few weeks old and almost a mile away from the nearest body of water. My grandfather brought her home, I named her Lola, and I spent the next twelve years putting obscene amounts of time and money into that little wet dinosaur. When my husband and I moved into a tiny trailer, we had to give Lola up. There was just no way that the floor could support 2,000lb of water and stone. I surrendered her to a wildlife center, and she is living it up in a large pond on their property. She will be 18 years old this summer!
A few years ago I was working at a local pet store. I had some snakes at the time. While my care hadn't been the best at the time, but it was better than could be expected at most pet stores. This one was much better than chains at least. We had a ball python sent to us wayyyyy too young that had a number of minor health problems. Despite some vet visits, they got worse and worse. He eventually lost both of his eye caps to a double eye infection, contracted mites, had a bad shed, and somehow got a large cut on his side. He also had never eaten unassisted in his life, although I don't know exactly how old he was when he was shipped to us. I worked in the fish department so I didn't get to follow or help with his treatment but at this point, the manager over the animals asked me to take it. I wasn't planning on getting any more snakes but I knew this guy was a goner if I didn't take him in. I started learning everything I could on rehabbing him. I was able to get his mites under control and get him hydrated relatively quickly and in less than 3 weeks he ate unassisted for the first time in his life. Since I got him, he has gone from a roughly 65 gram emaciated ball python who had never eaten on his own living in a 20 long quarantine tank with paper towels to a 1300 gram happy and healthy snake living in a 4x2x2 that never misses a meal. He also motivated me to learn and improve my husbandry for all of my other snakes who have all benefited from it. An unexpected rescue in the worst of conditions ended up helping me and my entire collection and has flourished since I took him in. I also was able to pass on what I learned to the pet store which was very open and receptive to it. I haven't worked there for a while but I can still see the things I learned and passed on being used. Here is an album of his journey from day 1 through just last week. NSFW warning, there are a couple feeding pictures and a video. https://imgur.com/a/y4INISi
I was tripping on mushrooms and walked into a pet store.
I was part of a reptile rehoming Facebook page. A woman posted a baby bearded dragon, and I pounced on it. Turns out, she bought the beardie for her 8 yr old kid who thought he wanted it, but ended up being terrified of it and not wanting the poor lizard. They bought the beardie and his whole setup on Thursday; he was in my house by Saturday. Can’t imagine the life he would’ve had if that punk kid kept him.
I snuck pet a herd of baby cresties. I got caught. And got reprimanded. Anyway. Next day I put my sweater on that I was wearing to go out again. And there was a crestie on it.. . She's going on 2ish, I'd assume.
Not a reptile. My husband and I work in a warehouse. One day, he gets a call that someone needs a mouse taken outside from the trap. He assumed it was a catch and release trap. It wasn't. It was a spring trap. Somehow, the mouse had survived uninjured. It was January and my husband refused to this poor lucky mouse out in the snow. So he chilled in a box until we got off work and went to the pet store to get what we needed. This was the start of 2 years of pet mice.
My ex roommate lied about letting me get a cat so I would move in with him but he said reptiles were fine I skimmed craigslist, found a ball python, did some research before deciding to pick him up moved out 2 months later because he was WFH before it was cool as a cover for being a drug dealer and I was nervous about playing dumb enough to police if he ever got raided still have the snake, it'll be 6 years with him in August Although what Youtube didn't tell me about getting a snake off craigslist is bad husbandry and stress can cause a wobble. His heat lamp wasn't on a dimmer, there was no thermostat, and his tank was caked in Great Dane slobber
My senior year of high school my younger sister showed up with a ball python one day and said, “hey, I tried to call you. I got you a snake from a friend who didn’t want it anymore”..sure, I guess? 😅. I hid it in my bedroom closet (in a terrarium mind you), and kept him from my mom for 6 months before she found out. I never realized how strong they were, and he weaseled his way out of my closet one day while I was at work and gave my mom an absolute heart attack lol.. his name was Dale
I went with my mother in law to a local plant shop located in a big craft market. They specialized in indoor and terrarium plants. I had purchased plants for my terrarium before from there. Anyway we walk in and the clerk tells us they just had a big shipment brought in by their owners from south Florida. So we are browsing and my mother in law buys a couple plants. The clerk calls out and asks me if I'm buying any plants today. I respond that "no, I am just looking today because my current terrarium is fully planted." She excitedly responds with "You have a terrarium?! What do you have in it?" So given the chance to gush about my new favorite hobby I pull up pictures and tell her all about my setup and the animals inside including my mourning geckos. "You have lizards!!!" even more excited, "I have a lizard!" Me misunderstanding and thinking she's about to tell me about her pet I ask what kind it is. No no she means she caught a lizard while processing the new inventory. She has no idea what kind it is and before we walked in she was just starting to look up any rescues to take it. Next thing I know she's pressing a Tupperware container into my hands and asking if I knew what the lizard was and if it was local. Being as it was a penny sized brown anole I could easily tell her that they were not local and were in fact invasive to Florida. Finding out it wasn't a local species she asked if I would take it saying it would be a big relief to her for it to go to an experienced home. So I took her home while my mother in law tried to get her head wrapped around what she knew happened to me (aka people just randomly giving me animals) but had never witnessed first hand. Twiggy has been with us for about a year now and just recently got upgraded from her nursery jar to her big girl enclosure. Edited to add that since then I've been offered and turned down 2 leopard geckos (they went to a friend instead) and will be taking in a beardie next Friday.
Well I had my dad convinced to get a ball python cause he doesn't really care about the pets I have he just pays for them (I mostly pay for them at 19 yrs old now but he still pitches in lol). But we had to convince my mom, so while she was drunk I was like hmm I should convince her to let me get a snake and I showed her a pastel banana BP and she fell in love... She then proceeded to pay $275 right then and there (which is very out of character for her ☠️) to get him + the setup the next day 😂. They've since split but I now have 4 BPs (my dad got the other 3 for me) and 2 cresties that I got myself and I'm setting my eyes on a garter colony.
My grandpa went to work he had to grab a box after his co-workers captured a lizard in the warehouse. That hitch-hiked all the from south Florida to Tampa in a Pepsi truck. And he took him home since nobody else wanted him.