Reptile Shows!

[pitbulllady]

Anyone besides myself and Sparky ever been to one?
There's FINALLY going to be one here in SC again, after a long "dry spell", though I suspect that the gas prices will keep a lot of buyers and vendors away. I'm going, but probably won't be able to get much, since the aforementioned gas prices have me pretty much teetering on the edge of personal backruptcy, especially when you consider that I'm now officially on a "fixed income"-most, if not all, school districts in South Carolina freeze teacher salaries after they've been teaching so many years as a way of "rewarding" us for sticking with it for so long, and mine is now frozen and will never increase, not for cost of living, nor anything else, even though I've still got a minimum of 6 years before I can consider retirement. Anyway, I'm still looking forward to the show, and just a chance to get out and be around other people who don't think I'm a psycho case because I don't run screaming from a snake or a spider. I'm taking the camera, and hope to get some decent pictures, so if the weather cooperates, maybe I can upload some tomorrow evening. SC reptile shows allow venomous species, which are the most misunderstood and the ones that fewer people get to see.

pitbulllady

[koosie]

Sadly not. I've been to a cat show and a rabbit show and I didn't really see the sense in them frankly but a reptile show would be much more interesting not least because of all the different species you'll see. Looking foward to copping a snook. Will there be any insects or amphibians on show or is it for the rep-purists?

I've been exhibiting at plant fairs this year but they're pretty boring by comparison. The next one's at Jodrell Bank Observatory supposedly on the lawn in front of the big dish:

http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/

I'll be taking a Cobra Lily, but nothing as good as a Cobra.

[pitbulllady]

Originally Posted by koosie

Sadly not. I've been to a cat show and a rabbit show and I didn't really see the sense in them frankly but a reptile show would be much more interesting not least because of all the different species you'll see. Looking foward to copping a snook. Will there be any insects or amphibians on show or is it for the rep-purists?

I've been exhibiting at plant fairs this year but they're pretty boring by comparison. The next one's at Jodrell Bank Observatory supposedly on the lawn in front of the big dish:

http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/

I'll be taking a Cobra Lily, but nothing as good as a Cobra.

There were quite a lot of invertebrates, mostly arachnids(tarantulas, scorpions, HUGE centipedes, etc.), but a few insects, like Madagascan Hissing Cockroaches and Asian Walking Sticks and Orchid Mantids, as well as feeder crickets and mealworms. I managed to score some new tarantulas that I wasn't expecting anyone to have, including a gorgeous Mexican Golden Red-Rump, Brachypelma ruhnai, which is a very rare species. I also got a pair of young Brachypelma subulosums, which I plan to breed when they get old enough.

Unfortunately, my stupid camera that I took with me had a dead battery. The battery just went dead with it sitting here, not in use. I took that camera because it's small and can fit in my purse, whereas my trusty old Fuji Finepix S9000 is a fulls-size SLR camera. I'm sorta planning on going back tomorrow, if for no other reason than to get pics, since there were snakes there that I had never even seen before, like a striped Copperhead and a Leucistic Pygmy Rattler, and a hybrid between a Canebrake Rattler and an Eastern Diamondback. Rat Snakes were selling well, and I've got over a dozen here that I've caught in the yard and crossing the road, so I am probably gonna take those and at least see if I can trade them for something. One of the snakes I was hoping to find was a really big Eastern King Snake, but all the Easterns were fairly small. As luck would have it, after I'd unloaded my spiders and was driving to a little country store to get something to eat, there was a snake crossing the road, and it just happened to have been a HUGE male Eastern King! Nothing better than a free snake! I'd left my snake bags in the truck(was driving the Aveo), so he had to ride around my neck the whole way, which he did as if he'd been doing that all his life; he was like, "about TIME you showed up! This crawling around bit is getting old! Now I've got somebody to chauffeur me around!" He's "in shed", too, a time when most snakes are moody and nippy, to say the least, and he hasn't offered to bite or spray musk. I can hardly wait to see what he looks like once he sheds. I'll have to get some pics of him, too, now that I'm home with a REAL camera that doesn't go dead on me!

pitbulllady