Repticon slithers through

COMMENTARY hall. It also makes stops in Kissimmee and Lakeland.

For some purveyors of these real-life Slytherins, this is a love that blossomed in childhood. Take Zelph Ridgeway of Ridgeway Exotics. “I started collecting when I was 8 or 9,” he says. Ridgeway is a licensed wildlife collector out of Port Charlotte. “Copperheads, venomous was what I first collected.”

Of course, not everyone has spent their lives scouring the ground for our venomous neighbors. Some people only recently converted to the scale life. “I was always a dog person,” says Blair Lassiter. The Orlando resident got her first bearded dragon two years ago. She found it was hard to bring her new pet out for bike rides or walks. “I always had to keep a hand on her.”

That’s why Lassiter created Sandfire Sling, a company wherein she sells handmade reptile carriers. “I said, ‘Well, if I need it, maybe other people need it.’ ”

Bearded dragons are one of the more popular pets. “They’re considered the puppy dog of the reptile world,” says Heather Moye of Fairy Tail Dragons. “They’re very interactive and docile.”

But one of the main attractions has to be the ball pythons, or, more specifically, their morphs, which are basically like dog breeds with different coloring and sizes. Steven Casino of Steve’s Morphs out of Brooksville has dozens of clear boxes of snakes he has bred. “If I see something that looks cool and I have the ingredients to make it, I will,” he says of morphs such as the blade clowns or the piebalds. “Sometimes I’ll make something entirely new,” he says, as he did with his vanilla cremes.

It takes a warm heart to love a pet with cold blood.

“This is a passion that you get and you chase it,” says Joe Kinney of Gulf Coast Exotics from Sarasota. He holds up one of his favorite iguanas. “When you get one like this, it makes it all worthwhile.”

The next Orlando edition of Repticon will be Jan. 26-27. Tickets and details can be found at repticon.com.