so how'd ya get started???

Hoj

Friendly Grasshopper
not sure if this has been done before or not but i thought i would toss it out there:

what made you get into/started with chameleons?

i myself had no previous reptile experience, but had always found them fasinating. one day a neighbour had a exo-terra large terrarium with alot of acceesories with it at the end of her drivway makred "free" so i grabbed it up and it sat in my living room for a week or two when i was just grabbed by the idea of a chameleon.. so another 2-3 months went by, of daily convincing ( to the gf ) that a cham was a good idea and one was all i would need and i had everything i could need for it ( hahahaha ) at the time i thought it was true tho.. well after some hard convincing and a good lil bonus from work it was decided.
i spent almost 2 more weeks searching for a male veiled cham, it was acctually very hard with no previous knowledge of the hobby, i f found 2 males at a petstore and went and picked up my lil Camo,
it has been love ever since and growing daily.

next to getting my chams the next best thing was finding this fourm..

so whats your story??

Hoj
 
Hey man. Good thread. I was always creeped out by reptiles and an ol friend had a chameleon. I was always fascinated with it. The way it ate and walked. So i was like wth. I will give it a wirl. Found a yearbold female ambilobe for sale. Now my fiance has fallen in live with them also. We now have my original ambilobe. My male carpet. My carpet eggs. Male nosy be. And i just bought my fiance a female nosy be. (our female carpet that passed was "hers" so she was upset when we lost her.) i have now been limited to a "chameleon wall". But that will change. Haha. Way to addicting. Thank you to everyone on this site for getting me hooked :p
 
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I have always been fasinated but my dad always said that they die easily because he had a reptile only store and they were hard to care for. But I finally convinced him and I am getting a Jackson Chameleon in Augest.
 
I went to this exoctic pet store.
They had this huge sulcata turtle crawling around and we loved him, and after a few times of going there, they had sulcata babys from the big turtle. We had to get one. But after some research, we couldnt. They are a bulldozer XD
So when my dad caved into getting one.. I said.. Hey. Chameleons are awesome and they are easier.. So why not get one? Then after hours of my dad talking to the breeder (who was high on marajuana and drunk) we decided to get one. The guy was actually really good on chams. XD We did go to another breeder though.
 
First off i've kept herps for the past 10 years and have been fascinated with chameleons from the start. I didn't purchase my first chameleon until very recently though, mostly because of time and accesibility, but it's kind of a funny story none the less.
My wife and I finally had some time to devote to a hobby and we were looking into owning a pet. We live in a somewhat small apartment complex, small enough atleast that I didn't feel the space was adequate for a dog, and I'm allergic to cats.
So ruling out the two most popular household pets off the bat, we decided to look into iguanas. Now mind you I started owning reptiles from a young age, but when you're young research is kind of non-exsistant. So I had an iguana when I was 13 and figured that'd be the perfect pet for us...
I was very very wrong to say the least. Problem is, like most that come here with problems, we did most of our research via the exotic pet shop in town. We ended up spending over 500$ on crap we didn't need for an animal that would eventually get bigger than the space we were willing to provide for it. The pet store was a huge source of misinformation, but being more resourceful I started researching online and found out how many mistakes we had made.
Luckily though we never actually purchased the iguana and ended up returning all the junk we had bought... The experience as a whole got me into Chams, from the initial exciment of owning a new reptile, and then the disappointment of being mislead by the petstore. All that lead me to look into other (smaller) reptiles which were more appealing to me in general.
I found this website and haven't turned back since. Stalked the forums for a couple months and then finally became a member. Bought My first chameleon the next month after I had all my research down and enclosure/supplies setup. Now I have 2 amazing creatures.
 
i dont know how i was inspired but i started looking up chameleon info and what not. then i came across the bearded pygmies, looked up research and decided that i would rather get something that is more hardy then a veiled, panther, or jacksons, because i dont want too spend alot of money on an animal that im not an expert with. soo i baught bearded pygmies. then the obsession started :p
 
I've been keeping reptiles for about 30 years. I was fascinated with them from the time was about 8 years old, and I always had a jar or tank with something in it. I was breeding cornsnakes, kingsnakes and milksnakes in the mid 90s when I got an issue of Reptiles magazine in the mail that had an article on Veiled chameleons by Petra Lowe. I had seen them at the reptile show, and after reading the article, I decided to give them a try. It became an obsession and continues to be for me. Now I have a 7 year old son to enjoy them with.
 
Good idea for a thread. I breed holland lop bunnies and was at one of the pet stores selling my bunnies with my 4 year old son who wanted a tarrantula, after the pet store convinced us that a tarrantula wouldn't be a good pet for a 4 year old due to the fact that it shoots out all those hairs into your skin when frightened, he decided on a chameleon. After about 5 minutes of having it home he lost interest in it (imagine that! Lol) and I fell in love, became comletely fascinated by them, followed by an obsession that I know longer have control over and now I want to go into business breeding chameleons and have a few bunnies as pets! Who knew?.................:rolleyes:
 
I always had odd animals growing up. My mom did wildlife rescue, which I do now as well, so strange creatures were not so strange to me. At any given time we were raising squirrels, opossums, coons, any kind of bird imaginable, etc. I always like the reptiles the best and we had box turtles for many years. When I was in elementary school I started wanting a chameleon (no particular reason why, other than they're awesome!) but my mom knew they were difficult and got me an iguana to start with instead. She was a rescue - dying at a pet store, back in the day when there were decent pet stores that would just give animals to us because at least the animal would live and that was a better option to them. Well my iguana was great for a few years, until she did the typical iguana thing where they all of a sudden decide they hate everyone. I'm the only one that can handle her safely without getting bitten now. She's still kicking at 17. So once I started vet school I decided it was finally time to get a chameleon since I wasn't going to be moving back and forth between college summers anymore, I didn't have roommates that would freak out about it, and I had always wanted one! I used it as an incentive to get good grades for that semester, which gave me time to do all the required research. :) Turtles are my favorite animal, but I'm pretty sure if I had actually gotten a cham when I was younger like I wanted then it would be chameleons. ;)
 
I've kept tons of animals from cats, mice, rats, to anoles (I was about 12 - lizards/exotics all the way from there!),a wall lizard, a rat snake, water dragon, tarantula, chameleon, and savannah monitor.
Now I have 2 new veiled chams and a baby monitor again. Was without pets for a couple of years actually - have no idea why now!
 
All this talk about when we were kids is reminding me of the many animals I snuck into my house (under my shirt lol) and always got caught! I was however allowed to keep tons of frogs I collected in big garbage cans outside.... oh and the salamanders..... happy times lol:p:p
 
I laid eyes on my first chameleon in the summer of 2004 when my daughter came home from college for the summer with one. At first I thought what does she want with that thing????? :eek: Then I quickly fell in love with her. :p By the next summer she came home with several and the summer after so many they wouldn’t all fit in the house.:confused: My daughter has always traveled a lot with her boyfriend of 7 years so I was always the cham-sitter. She’s had mostly panthers and Melleri. She's also had a veiled, Bearded dragons, a Leopard Gecko, a Chinchilla and more recently two cats.

I didn’t get my very own chameleon until 2007 when my husband surprised me with Luie. I got Camille a year later in 2008. Camille laid a fertile clutches of eggs in 2009 and I raised a clutch of 27 babies in 2010 and now my little preemie Elly. Earlier this year I got Padre, my Parsonii.

I also have a Cuban Knight Anole named Dulce and a mixed breed dog named Red.
 
Well over 15 yrs ago. The ex-wife and I were in a Petco getting supplies for my saltwater tanks. She saw a 2 month old veiled in the reptile section. We were hooked. She showed me and I said we had better do some research first. The store employee told us we had to remove the back legs from the cricks so that it could feed. lol I had kept herps and exotics and knew that was total crap. So we bought a cpl of books and found a reptiles only store that had cb veileds. We bought our first veiled in 96 or 97. And Then I was addicted. Started breeding veileds and then ambanjas. I was one of the first pardalis breeders in Houston. We joined the Cin after meeting our vet Dr. Rob Coke. Bred for a few yrs then got kind of burnt out and I sold all my breeders. We just kept the saltwater tanks and the English Bulldogs. So after divorcing the jealous ex IM BACK! lol:p
 
I always had odd animals growing up. My mom did wildlife rescue, which I do now as well, so strange creatures were not so strange to me. At any given time we were raising squirrels, opossums, coons, any kind of bird imaginable, etc. I always like the reptiles the best and we had box turtles for many years. When I was in elementary school I started wanting a chameleon (no particular reason why, other than they're awesome!) but my mom knew they were difficult and got me an iguana to start with instead. She was a rescue - dying at a pet store, back in the day when there were decent pet stores that would just give animals to us because at least the animal would live and that was a better option to them. Well my iguana was great for a few years, until she did the typical iguana thing where they all of a sudden decide they hate everyone. I'm the only one that can handle her safely without getting bitten now. She's still kicking at 17. So once I started vet school I decided it was finally time to get a chameleon since I wasn't going to be moving back and forth between college summers anymore, I didn't have roommates that would freak out about it, and I had always wanted one! I used it as an incentive to get good grades for that semester, which gave me time to do all the required research. :) Turtles are my favorite animal, but I'm pretty sure if I had actually gotten a cham when I was younger like I wanted then it would be chameleons. ;)

A 17 year old Iguana???!!! That is awesome!!! I've never heard of one lasting that long in captivity. Great job!
 
nice stories... well we have a dog and i live near petsmart i had to get some food and i like snakes so i passed around the reptile section and saw a veiled and i just thought they were so cool and diff than any other pet then i started to do research and then bought everything i needed and got a panther like 4 days later :p and chams have become my fav pets
 
my story

Well, I've always been a little critter crazy. lol. Never had any reptiles though. When my son was young he started getting really interested in them and I bought us a few reptile magazines and stuff so we could research them. I will say that even back then, the pictures of chameleons always stood out as the absolute coolest, so I don't know why it never stuck out in my mind as an option. We threw him a reptile birthday party, he'd do school projects on iguanas, but we never did get any reptile pets. We had 2 cats & a dog, that was enough. He gradually stopped obsessing about reptiles but I never did. Anytime we'd be out shopping I'd always stop in any pet stores we passed to go look at the critters. I never forgot many years back a cage full of newly hatched veileds - most adorable things I'd ever seen in my life!! But the staff said chameleons are really fragile and hard to raise, and I had little kids, didn't want them to freak out if a new pet died. So i put it out of my mind and forgot about it.
About 4 years ago, I started working in a pet food store, and since it's a franchise, the owner was allowed to keep reptiles in there. He had a few bearded dragons, and geckos, and part of my job was to feed and care for them. I thought they were cool, but they never really did it for me, so I wasn't dying to get one. He got in a few long tailed grass lizards and anoles, and didn't really know how to care for them, so I had to research that, and it kind of rekindled my reptile interest again, as I had recently been to florida and seen anoles there.
A couple more years passed and I had been raising praying mantises and so had a couple of tanks lying around and had been buying crickets, and my husband happened to mention why don't you get a little lizard for one of those tanks? And I just flipped. PERMISSION?? For ANOTHER PET??? That like never happens!! haha. As by this time we now also have a ferret and a third cat, and a fish. lol. AND a smaller house!! So a previously cluttered dresser had been cleared off, there was room for a tank. Now, while he was picturing a little gecko in a ten gallon tank, I began planning something bigger and better. lol. Of course.
My original idea was a water dragon. They looked a lot like iguanas, my son's first obsession, I liked that they got big, but at least not iguana big. And supposedly not iguana moody for half the year. I liked the tropical look of their enclosures. But upon further research, the room they'd need was a little more than we would have available without moving it into the garage and i didn't want him to end up neglected - out of sight, out of mind. Plus the large swimming bins of water would prove difficult to maintain in our upstairs apartment. So, went back to researching.
Then one day I took the kids in to a local reptile shop just to look and drool, lol. And I saw Waldo. A big veiled chameleon. And I remembered chameleons. :) I remembered the cage full of babies. I remembered all the cool pictures in the magazines. I remembered the nature shows showing their tongues shooting. I remembered that I had always thought they were the coolest reptile of them all. How could I have forgotten about chameleons??
I went home and pulled out those magazines that I couldn't bring myself to throw out for ten years. I got on the internet and started searching. They can't be THAT much harder to take care of than the water dragon was going to be! I'm a lot more experienced with caring for animals than I was ten years ago. I have the internet at my disposal now. I can do this. So, research research research, I found this forum, and the obsession began.
My first attempt with a wildcaught flapneck was very short-lived, but did however cement my love for chameleons as the poor little fella died in my hands.
I then proceeded to purchase very well-bred panthers, and am now completely and fully in love. :D
 
I have never owned any reptiles until I got some map turtles. Then I got 2 leopard geckos just because they looked cute with their big eyes. I got into chameleons when I saw Chad of Tiki Tiki Reptiles display at the Tucson Reptile and Amphibian show last year. He had a gorgeous panther chameleon there, plus other chameleons. I did my research and bought my first baby cham at that show.
(So Chad, it's all your fault.) :)
 
I went to this exoctic pet store.
They had this huge sulcata turtle crawling around and we loved him, and after a few times of going there, they had sulcata babys from the big turtle. We had to get one. But after some research, we couldnt. They are a bulldozer XD
So when my dad caved into getting one.. I said.. Hey. Chameleons are awesome and they are easier.. So why not get one? Then after hours of my dad talking to the breeder (who was high on marajuana and drunk) we decided to get one. The guy was actually really good on chams. XD We did go to another breeder though.

sounds like i was the breeder..hahahaha jk..

my story is this..i was 13..i had about 4 years of experience in "regular" reptiles and amphibians..i say regulars cause the mom would not spend over 20 bucks for a lizard she said "you can find outside"..well on my birthday i decided i wanted somthing exotic..i was thinking of a parrot to be honest..but the screeching, and how they are like dogs(im not a fan of dogs..but then again, i dont like kids either..dogs require "love" constantly..my cat chills for a bit then leaves and does his own thing..p.s i will post a vid of him sitting on command like a dog)well parrots are no different..so i went to a pet store local..and saw this huge cage of like every chameleon that existed ( i thought so at the time..they had like 5 species hahah)..and was convinced to purchase a wc senagal and full set up ( the mom said since its an exotic, and its your birthday..this is what you want ok..!!! sweeeet!! p.s. a guitar was my gift from step dad..still playing metal to this day!!)so as you know bad story..he had internal parasites..one eye from purchase didnt open..they took advantage of a begginer, and it broke my heart..i waited 2 years to get another..and got a jacksons pair..been sucsessfully breeding since then! still love them like the first time i ever saw one!!!
 
I was into South American Cichlids and went to the local pet shop to get some supplies, fish or something like that about 8 years ago if my mind serves me correct. My EX GF had to have the little baby jacksonii xanth. I ended up being the one to take care of it and got hooked. Sold all my fish and aquarium stuff to make more room for chams.:D
 
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