After a great 2010, 2011 is getting off to a somewhat later start. We've talked to quite a few people in the northeast that are also having later starts, so we suppose it's no surprise. That being said, we've got 13 clutches on the ground and expect many more. The following table summarizes what what we have on the ground so far, read on if interested!

We don't have a "Birthing Record" on this website, but it's not because we don't want one. In many respects this website is as much a way for us to explore our interest in reptiles and organize and display our collection as it is a vehicle for displaying inventory, so a birthing record is a natural extension for the site. Time is the problem. We just haven't had time to get it built. Until we do, we're going to use the blog to let people know what we're producing this season, so keep an eye out for updates if you're interested in knowing what types of projects we're working on.

We are fortunate to have in our possession the Summer/Fall 2003 issue of Wild Earth: The Journal of the Wildlands Project. This issue, “Facing the Serpent, “is devoted to the subject of snakes, and includes essays by E. O. Wilson, Eileen Crist, Harry Greene, Reed Noss, Charles Bowden, and others. This wonderful journal unfortunately ceased publication after a 10-year run. An anthology of articles from the journal was subsequently published, but none of the essays on the “serpent” were included. We particularly want to talk about E. O. Wilson’s essay “The Serpent,” which can be found in a slightly different form in his book Biophilia.

This is the second part to our previous post on incubators. The topic, however, is one that for us has lessons that extend well beyond the world of reptiles. Last year we stumbled upon a man running a small business building hollow-core PVC caging and cabinet incubators, similar to those constructed by Habitat Systems. His advertised prices were half those of Habitat Systems, so we decided to give him a shot and buy one large cabinet incubator, with potentially more orders behind if he could deliver on the product. This is a cautionary tale of what happens when a price is too good to be true.

Given the time of year (ball python eggs are hitting the ground around the country at a rapid clip right now), we thought we'd throw up a quick blog post about suitable commercial reptile egg incubators. We've used a wide variety of commercially available incubators over the years with varying levels of success. This post is not intended to get into the details of reptile egg incubation - we'll write more on that later - but rather to simply provide a quick list of potential options for those that are researching incubators for the first time, or others who are thinking of increasing their incubator capacity.