Reptile Expo

Last Sunday, Al and I went to the Wasatch Reptile Expo with his mom and Valerie. We had a lot of fun there and saw some pretty cool animals.

Carlene (who we got Trillian from) was there with some newly hatched rainbow boas (about a month old). This picture isn't great. They look like a beautiful cherry-red suede. Carlene had to move her business, Tropical Encounters, because the rent in her original store space went up. She wasn't able to make it in the new location. Now she's operating online and through her home and is going down to birds only. She was working on selling off all of her reptiles and reptile care products.

Here are some other snakes we saw:

A Bumblebee Ball Python for $1,500:


These big ones weren't for sale, but you can go through a company like Creature Encounters to have a reptile-themed birthday party complete with reptiles and handlers.

A Tiger Reticulated Python (Retics tend to be aggressive):

This Albino Burmese Python's name was Nanners. It is actually small for a Burm:

Here is a Reticulated Python that is small for the breed. This was on display with rescued reptiles.

A Dumeril's Boa--Al used to own one of these (Her name was Xena because these snakes can hold on really tight):

These were the stars of the show--three Goldfinger Ball Pythons. One million for each of the females, but the male is a bargain at only 750,000. These were bred by Black Lotus Reptiles out of Tooelle here in Utah. Right now, these are the only three in existence. It remains to be seen whether or not this was luck or reproducible genetics.

Al's very excited about his ball python plan now. He talked to one of the breeders there and is going to be looking at breeding Mojaves and Cinnamons into the "super" versions of each snake. The super Mojaves are pure white. The super Cinnamons are pure brown. I'm not sure why he didn't take pictures.

Here are some non-snakes. I love the noses on these guys!


And some Chameleons. Sorry I didn't flip this pic:



And the bearded dragons!

There was a vendor there, Rhett's Pets, who had an interesting story. This family has a son with Down Syndrome and they haven't been treated very well by the whole mess that is US health care. They started breeding and selling reptiles to help off-set his medical bills. Check out their webpage:

http://rhettsjourney.blogspot.com/

We stopped by the Reptile Depot area and picked up quite a few supplies for our own bearded dragons. We usually order from them online, so it was nice to not have to pay shipping!

After the expo, we went to the Gateway to eat and shop a little. I made myself a Build-A-Bear for my classroom. Her name is Minerva and she's dressed for Halloween! (The picture was taken at Al's mom's house, after we were done shopping.)

When we got home, we decided it was time to get our two bearded dragons together. They kept a close eye on one another and didn't move very much for the first hour or so.

Moraine is the larger of the two. She's on the left. Rand, the male, who is also smaller, was introduced into her cage. He hid out in the digging pan while she stood very still and stared at him.

Eventually, they both came over to the warm side of the tank and basked.

They're still getting along great. They're doing a lot of the cute Beardie behaviors now that there are two of them, like head bobbing and arm waving.