Expert care guides, species spotlights, and exotic pet news
I’ll be honest—the first time I saw a Kenyan sand boa at a reptile show, I walked right past the table. It was a plain brownish-orange sausage with tiny eyes and a blunt tail that I mistook for a deformed snake. Not exactly a showstopper. Then the breeder picked one up, and it burrowed between […]
The first time I saw a rubber ducky isopod in person, I laughed out loud. I’d been keeping and breeding isopods for years—dairy cows, powder oranges, zebras, the classics—but nothing prepared me for a tiny crustacean that genuinely looks like a rubber duck. That bright yellow face, the little dark “eyes,” the rounded body segments […]
I still remember the exact moment I brought home my first African grey parrot. She was a Congo grey, about 14 weeks old, still sporting a few baby feathers, and she looked up at me from her travel carrier with the most intelligent, unnervingly perceptive eyes I’d ever seen on an animal. I’d raised cockatiels […]
I’ll never forget the first time I saw a palmetto corn snake in person. It was at a breeder’s table at a reptile expo, and honestly, I stopped dead in my tracks. The snake was this creamy white canvas splattered with flecks of red, orange, and brown—like someone had flicked a paintbrush at a white […]
I still remember the first clutch of sulcata tortoise hatchlings I ever produced. I was sitting on the floor of my reptile room at two in the morning, watching a tiny sand-colored baby no bigger than a golf ball push its way out of the egg. I was absolutely smitten. That little nugget fit in […]