New England Reptile distributors Trip

Last Wednesday we attended a tour of New England reptile distributors. This is a large facility that breeds all manner of snakes. They had thousands of snakes from fairly common ones to very, very rare. We saw one snake which there is reportedly only 4 known from that exact species. N.E.R.D. as they use for an acronym, ships snakes worldwide and had just shipped a $20,000 snake to the UK. Some of their snakes retail for up to $200,000!

The tour began in one of the snake rooms. These rooms we extremely hot, humid and smelly! A couple of the children in the tour had to leave as the heat was just too much. The rooms need to be very hot since these snakes come from much hotter areas than New Hampshire. We were shown 2 or 3 snakes in each room, with the kids being given a chance to touch some snakes and hear some information bout snakes and their care and also info about specific types of snakes. There were 4 or snake rooms, a lizard room and a fun cave room where a variety of reptiles were kept and brought out for the children to see and touch. This included one snake that was more than 10 feet long, some lizards and a large turtle. I didn't get many post- able photos of the snake rooms since there were quite a few kids in the group whom I don't have permission to post their photos.

I did take pictures of a few snakes, this top one was my favorite.



The varied colors of the snakes were so interesting and often beautiful.

a sleepy lizard below.

In each snake room there were rows and rows of bins as in the photo below. Each bin houses a snake.

Some snakes live in larger enclosures but the tour leader said many prefer the bins. The tour was informative, we learned a lot about snake reproduction, snake genetics and snake laws-quite a few snakes at N.E.R.D. were police confiscated from people not licensed to own them or pets that people could not handle. Our tour leader said they are called out at all hours to help catch or confiscate dangerous snakes.

There was also a large pet shop attached to N.E.R.D. The pet shop had all the usual cats, dogs, fish, more reptiles, small furry things and of course pet supplies. We ad almost as much fun i the large pet shop as on the reptile tour.

Large fish tank:

Hard to see but there were kittens in these cages, we wanted them! They were pricey though.

Tristan decided to dress nicely for the animals :-).

Much time was spent with the puppies, what fun!

We spent about 4 hours at N.E.R.D. and plan to return again another time. Fun place!