Was never really a huge fan of reptiles and they are something I never considered as pets. But now that I am an owner of a couple reptiles, my feelings have completely changed.
However, it first wasn’t by choice that I became a proud reptilian owner. My boyfriend surprised me with a baby ball python.
I was scared at first to pick it up because I thought it would attack me. But it didn’t, because ball pythons are actually the most docile snakes to have as a pet. They literally curl up into a ball when they are scared.
Once I got used to it, I started to take it out of the tank more often and started to just sit with it when I would come home from work.
I began to really love it and my opinion and feelings toward reptiles altered slightly.
Now, we originally thought our pet snake was a boy, and named him Monty – for the Monty Python cliché term if you didn’t catch that.
But once we took it to our friend Matt, who has a doctorate in zoology, he said our snake is actually a girl.
It took us a whole year before we realized our snake was not a boy. So we changed its name to Sophie, because Monty wasn’t the most feminine name.
We didn’t just stop at owning one single snake; we decided to get two baby bearded dragons – which by the way are really cute when they are babies.
Our two bearded dragons are named Chuck and Fiona and they are really interesting. When they need to regulate their temperature they sit there with their mouths open, tongue sticking out and just stare at the glass.
They are actually pretty funny and always will make me laugh because they do some pretty weird things like lick the dirt or dig in the sand and make no progress.
Being the owner of reptiles has really changed my view on them. Yes, some reptiles should not be pets, for example anacondas or alligators, but ball pythons and bearded dragons are wonderful pets in my opinion.
BECKY HILKER
