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[JuliusSqueezer]

With me it went kinda like this. I started catching and really studying reptiles when I was 7 or 8 ...not counting the frogs, toads and lizards I was dragging in the house since I was about 3. But at 8, I didn't think I knew it all but I was determined to learn every bit of it. I watched a lot of nature shows and read every book about snakes I could find. By the time I was 14 or 15. I knew everything there was to know about any snake on the planet and everyone else was basically clueless. I was comfortable enough back then to wrangle some of the venomous found around here without so much as getting an adrenaline rush and started doing some rescue/rehab work. Yeah! I was there...knew it all! Then I got to college. That's when I started learning the most important lesson of all in herpetology. I started seeing that most of what I KNEW was actually very wrong. And everything I actually learned led to other unopened doors so basically, the more I learned, the more I also learned I didn't know. Then when I hit my late 20s, internet came out and opened up a lot more doors and made me feel all stupid yet again. Man...I wish we had internet back in the early 70s. Kids today getting into this hobby fresh get a jump start. They don't have to spend years and years of trial and error, learning by screwing up in every conceivable way there is to screw up till they find something that sorta works. It's all right under their fingertips. The only thing they really have to sort out is who to believe. Unfortunatly, they tend to relate more to kids their own age and like everything else...blow off the older people as stupid...which in a way is fair because we tend to blow them off the same way sometimes. But it shouldn't be that way. You younger guys can study and read and learn circles around some of us old guys but all the knowledge in the world doesn't replace wisdom. Wisdom doesn't come from books or google searches. It comes from experience. Reading about some things gives you basic ideas at best. Till you get your hands on an adult amazon tree boa or till you have a 7 foot eastern diamondback tailed on a hook for the millionth time...these things you can't get from a book or a webpage. Nothing in text can prepare you for the events that unfold when you actually take some of those plunges. So when some of us oldtimers seem a bit harsh, cranky, frustrated or the big one..." feeling fairly sure you are getting in way over your head and don't mind telling you" It's because we've been there and done that and seen the same crap unfold so many times that there really needs to be credit given out to some of us old farts for just being harsh and cranky and not going out and climbing towers with sniper rifles.

So to sum it all up...this what I know now. It's probably going to turn out wrong when I'm 60 but I'll deal with that then...Right now, I'm still right so don't argue...anyway...

Knowlege + experience = wisdom. NEITHER is worth smack without the other but that's ok. Get the knowledge first...as much as you can...the experience is the tough one because the knowlege you have will convince you that 2-3 years working with that ball python counts for anything. Be patient on the experience thing. It takes a long time till the hands on stuff starts becoming routine and even more importantly is learning from experience which things you absolutely do NOT want to let become routine. I don't think I'm close to being there yet. 33-34 years and I still feel that I have a long way to go so pardon me if I get a little cranky when someone locked into the teenage knowitall stage gets a little under my skin.