On the love of slithering reptiles
Frauke dubbels
December 2002, minus 9 degrees Celsius. I’m sitting on my sofa when the phone rings. It’s a friend: ‘Hey, we still have two young corn snakes from the summer that need a home. Would you like them?’
Yes, I did! I had wanted them for ages, but I was never allowed to have them while I was living with my parents. Now I had my first flat of my own – what a game changer!
What followed was a mini shopping spree for my first proper terrarium and what felt like 3,000 conversations with people who knew more about the subject than I did at the time. A few days later, I was allowed to collect the two young animals.
It was still cold. When I arrived at my friends‘ place, they asked, ‘How are you going to transport them?’ A good and important question, considering the temperatures at the time. I had a bag with me, but that was it.
I was quietly hoping that someone would offer me a polystyrene box, but no such luck. I drove home with the animals under my scarf, right next to my neck, with the heating in the car turned up full and my heart pounding. And then they were there, and they even had names back then.
Since then, snakes have enriched my life, and because two years later it turned out that one of my animals was a female, I have also been breeding them ever since.
For many, many years, I only bred corn snakes. Great morphs, some colours that appeared for the first time in my animals, and it was really fun.
There were already quite a few Thamnophis breeders in Hamburg at the time, so it was quite well distributed.
Over the years, however, I wanted to try something different. At first, I considered giving up altogether, but then suddenly I had a few Lampropeltis, and eventually some Thamnophis, and both are doing really well here.
In addition to Thamnophis sirtalis tetrateania, I also have Thamnophis sirtalis sirtalis flame and a very young pair of the Quebec variant. The T. sirtalis fitchi also want to grow, just like the T. proximus rubrilineatus.
I am slowly getting used to the temperament of some subspecies, and the constant curiosity of some animals enriches my everyday life immensely.
Only one Concinnus has had to move so far, because it just didn’t work out between the two of us.
I have been a member of EGSA since 2025. I am delighted to have made such great contacts here since then and hope to continue the lively and exciting exchange.
Frauke
cypher-red@freenet.de
01 Thamnophis sirtalis tetrataenia
02 Thamnophis sirtalis sirtalis Flame & Quebec Flame
03 Thamnophis sirtalis fitchi