reptile show

The boys and I have been busy busy... I have a lot of reading to do for my own schoolwork, and chores and errands, and freelance work, and Scouts, and soccer, and karate... oh my goodness! So busy. We did manage to go to the reptile show here in Sacramento this weekend, though. The vendors had tons and tons of lizards and snakes. The lizards were mostly geckos, chameleons, and bearded dragons, but the snakes ran the gamut. The gamut of non-poisonous species, anyway.



Contrary to the name of the show, there were also amphibians and arthropods too -- we saw some awesome scorpions and spiders, some hissing cockroaches (Adon petted a few), and one giant millipede. Both boys got a chance to let it run around on their hands and arms; they reported that it felt tickily and prickily at the same time. I guess the ends of their little feet are pretty pointy, in order to hang on.



We looked at froggies and turtles -- one vendor had poison-arrow frogs in every color; I got a movie of the blue ones (click on the thumbnail below), but they had bright yellow, green and red too. Every person who came up to the booth asked if they could mix them in the same tank, and the guys behind the table just shook their heads sadly. I guess the little frogs are very territorial and keeping large number together or mixing species stresses them out. I read also that captive-bred species are not actually poisonous, and that scientists believe that part of their diet in the wild is what makes them poisonous. Wild-caught frogs actually lose their toxicity once in captivity as well.



Anyway, it was fun and interesting. A little different environment than a zoo, but lots to be learned. The benefit of going to a show like this with the boys is that they see a different aspect of animal enthusiasm; folks at these shows like to keep, raise and breed the animals, and their collective expertise is vast. We have a corn snake of our own, and I think it's good for the boys to see what's possible and available if their interest is piqued, and want to expand their horizons.