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Welcome to my one of my newest additions to my webpage. So far, I have birds and fish, so now to move on to one of my newest hobbies: herp keeping.
In case you are even newer to this than I am (hard to imagine), herp is short for Herptiles which is a nice word that includes reptiles (snakes, lizards, turtles, etc) and amphibians. So, instead of having to say "I'm a reptile keeper and I'm an amphibian keeper" (which takes a lot of syllables and a long time to say) I can just say "I keep herps." You can't imagine some of the looks i get from my friends when i say that.
As you may have figured out at some point--I work at a pet store. At this pet store, we happen to sell herps. (Imagine that). So I've had to learn about how to care for each and every herp we carry, not only so I can keep them alive while they're at my store, but so I can help others keep them alive.
At the store we have carried the following: iguanas, leopard geckos, african fat tail geckos, various swifts, jackson's chameleons, water dragons, cuban tree frogs, white's dumpy tree frogs, green and grey tree frogs, african dwarf frogs, fire bellied toads, leopard frogs, chinese and japanese firebelly newts, various skinks, basilisks, house geckos, flying geckos, salamanders and pacman frogs. And we're not stopping there.
My personal collection of herps is growing. It started with my leopard gecko, then african dwarf frogs, and now three firebelly toads, several japanese firebelly newts, leopard frogs, a jackson's chameleon, a flying gecko, an australian white's dumpy tree frog, and a white lipped tree frog. My dream is to someday tear apart the spare bedroom and make it into a haven for an iguana and also to succesfully (note successfully) keep a green basilisk.
In my quest to learn more about herps in order to be better able to serve at my job, to take proper care of my own herps, and to expand my personal knowledge because I do that sort of thing--I thought it might be nice to share what I learn. I have found that most webpages that are of any use come from people who really know just about everything about the animal they're talking about, and because of that, make assumptions about what others will know. While some things should be painfully obvious, I've found through my position at work that they aren't. Therefore, I hope that I can offer useful information from the perspective of a person who isn't an expert--but took the time and effort to make certain that who ever I give advice to can successfully keep their herp.
So I have experience with the animals I will talk about, through work and my own pets. I have also taken a lot of time to research everything I can about these animals. I spent most of my winter vacation doing this (and now my summer vacation), and what for? Well, my manager's going to buy me lunch. And so I could improve upon the stupid caresheets my pet store provided for us.
Each link below will give you a caresheet about the herp, pictures, and links to other pages that may help you. There will also be an easy to print version of the caresheet.
Enjoy! And tell me what you think of this section of my webpage.
Reptiles
African Fat Tail Gecko
Green Anole
Green Basilisk
Green Iguana and feeding them.
Jackson's Chameleon
Leopard Gecko
Skinks
Swifts (Fence lizard, Spiny lizard)
Turtles. A general caresheet on a Water Turtles and a general caresheet on Box Turtles
Amphibians
African Dwarf Frog
Cuban Tree Frog
Firebelly Newt (Japanese and Chinese)
Firebelly Toad
Pacman frog (Argentinian horned frog)
White's Dumpy Frog