YAY! It's Reptile Expo Day!

Life has been incredibly boring lately, with too much work and not enough bloggable activity.  Unless I can figure out an interesting way to portray my attempts to learn how to dungeon master, that is.  Or I could write a treatise on ways to keep entertained while driving around by yourself all day, I guess.

But today we got to go to the Rocky Mountain Reptile Expo!  This is a dangerous thing--the first time we ever went, we came home with a snake.  And the last time we went we came home with a Leachie.  This time we came home with.... well, you'll see.

It seems like the reptile expos always inadvertently have a theme.  Whatever is popular for breeding this season.  Sometimes you see thousands and thousands of crested geckos.  Sometimes everyone has bearded dragons, or leopard geckos.  Sometimes it's all about the different morphs (ie. color variations, for you non-reptile nerds out there) of ball pythons, and you'll see stacks and stacks of snakes.

And there were some pretty cool morphs at this show, like this pastel het clown.  "Pastel" refers to the color variant, "het" means that the trait is recessive, and "clown" is the color pattern, and the "66%" refers to the strength of the het gene.  More or less.  Those with unusual traits can sell for up to $1500.  There's an art to breeding beautiful ball pythons.

Of course, there aren't just ball pythons at reptile shows.  For instance, I've never seen so many rainbow boas in one place.  (I really wanted to pick them all up and have a handful of baby rainbow boas, but the breeder assured me I would come away covered in bites.  Oh well.)

There were also more exotic snakes than usual.  Here we have three different color variants of the green tree python.  These ones are babies; when they get older, they'll all be green.

And here we have a guy with so much snake he needs helpers to hold it all.

It seemed like the theme of this show, though, was variety.  There was so much diversity this time, and a lot of them super-exotic animals that you rarely see for sale.  Totally cool!  Check out this beautiful red eyed tree frog.  I've never seen such an excellent specimen up for sale.

And here we have a young tegu.  Giving me the stink-eye.  These guys are usually really mean, but this little one was totally chill, even after being manhandled all day by excited teenagers.

This little chameleon, I think, was less thrilled about finding himself on display.  Though, I tend to think that all chameleons look thoroughly disapproving.

There were a bunch of collared lizards today, too, which I don't generally think of as captive animals.  They were ever-so charming.  In this picture we have a young collard lizard on the left, and a curious little night anole on the right.

Here's a collard lizard whose color you can see a bit better.  Aren't they beautiful?  They run wild all over New Mexico, and are always one of my favorite parts about going down to see ruins.  I honestly couldn't imagine keeping one in captivity.

Speaking of beautiful, look at all these dart frogs.  Dart frogs in the wild are poisonous because of their diet--they eat poisonous plants and then excrete the toxin through their skin.  Captive bred dart frogs, therefore, aren't poisonous.  They're still every color you can imagine, though!

 

 

Matt did want to take home an axolotl or three.  These guys are natives to one specific lake in Mexico and are highly endangered in the wild.  They're super-prevalent in captivity, though, because labs use them to study the genetics behind regeneration.  As pets, they require careful temperature control to keep them cool.

I, on the other hand, was pretty sure we couldn't call our house a proper zoo until we had a leaf-tailed gecko.  These guys are from Madagascar, and were pretty much the star of the show at the Museum of Nature and Science's recent reptile exhibit.

 And of course, it wouldn't be a trade show without the guy selling swords.

But no.  We weren't there for swords or frilly neonatal salamanders or knobby-kneed geckos.  We were there for something with a few less vertebrae.

No, not this cockroach.  Though it was quite popular with the 9 year old boy crowd.  We were there to find a bunk-mate for Grendel.  Something to clean up after her mess and to look totally cool at the same time.  Something that is known to live in harmony with Rhadodactylus geckos.

Bingo!  Meet Matilda the Giant African Millipede!  She's waving at you with at least half of her several hundred legs.  Our first pet who's actually going to earn her keep.

I tell you, at the reptile expo you can find anything you need.  And a whole lot of things you don't.  I call that a good day!