This is probably one of my favourite posts to publish on this blog, ever. I briefly mentioned an event I went to last Sunday in yesterday’s post. Here’s what I did that day! If you live in a city and often get bored on days off, this can hopefully give you some ideas – you may be able to find animal expos in your town too! These events often get no advertising, so you might have to make a conscious decision to learn about them. But when you do, there’s plenty to choose from! Even in my not-so-big city there are cat, dog, reptile expos every few weeks. An amazing way to spend a few hours on a weekend day!

I don’t share much personal info on this blog (there are more interesting topics to write about than myself!), so I never really had a chance to mention how I love reptiles and other exotic pets. I don’t own any myself (yet – I hope to move abroad in a few months and I wouldn’t want to put any animals through the stress of long, long transit). So, having to wait until I can finally get my own bunch of reptiles, I spend hours watching  exotic pets’ care videos on YouTube.

Last year, I discovered that if enough effort is put into searching for interesting events in my area, it’s actually possible to find some! The first of these niche events I went to was a carnivore plants expo – it was amazing, with hundreds, or even thousands of the most curious bloodthirsty plants in one place! But last weekend, last weekend was even more special. I found out about this exotic animal expo and I instantly made it the main event of the month. Here’s what they had!

Lizards. Hundreds of them, dozens of different species. The first table I saw after entering the venue had this cute little dragon patiently sitting on his piece of wood, basking under a heat lamp. How he was so calm, I’ve no idea. There were hundreds of people all around him!

There were dozens of chameleons, in all different morphs and sizes.

Leopard geckos, one of my favourite lizards. So cute with their leopard flecks and vibrant colours!

Yes, there were endless amounts of them!

More lizards. Shame on me, I don’t know the species!

Alright, now here’s the main point. The main reason why I went to this event, if I’m honest. My absolute favourite lizards, which will definitely be my first purchase once I’m settled abroad. Crested geckos! The cutest, the most adorable little guys. And there were so many of them, ahh!

Oh hi there! This one was really curious to find out what all those people around him were on about.

Here’s a close-up of my favourite gecko species. Cuteness overload! They may look like they’re rough, but in reality their skin is the smoothest, the softest thing you can imagine. And look at these little paws!

Here’s my photo of the year, possibly. It’s only the end of January, but it will be really hard to beat! After over a year of being deep in love with these geckos, I finally, for the very first time, got to handle one. My goodness, it made my day, my week, my month. No exaggeration! I was thrilled, absolutely thrilled. And I’m even deeper in love with crested geckos now. Ahhh! The happiest moment of recent months, no doubts. 😀

Alright, a breathe Alphe, breathe (I still can’t get over that one happy moment – even now, over a day later). Let’s move on to other reptiles – snakes. This cutie was truly interested in the lid, possibly examining it in hopes to find a way out. Or perhaps, hoping that there’s a Harry Potter somewhere in the crowd, able to make the lid disappear?

More snakes. I definitely saw a ton of royal pythons, corn snakes and milk snakes, but there were numerous other species too (I wish I could name them all, I’m not a snake expert yet).

Corn snakes – black and orange morphs (well, the colours have proper names but again –  I’m not that much of a snake expert. Yet).

Anyone hungry? Lizards need to eat too. And not all of them eat lettuce. In fact, most of them prefer some yummy protein over salads. 🙂

Tasty!

Besides snakes and lizards, there were also millipedes (harmless and nice) and scolopendras (also known as centipedes – aggressive and venomous)…

…scorpions…

…froggies…

…giant snails (busy with their cucumbers, not bothered by the crowd surrounding them).

More lizards, a few boxes full of tiny baby turtles, and tarantulas.

A giant jungle nymph, I believe? It was massive – you can see the bottom of big plastic bottles in the background, for comparison!

There were also full kingdoms for sale. Ant kingdoms. For those of you who don’t know, ants are a huge thing nowadays, there are plenty of companies specialising in selling ant colonies and enclosures for them.

Last but not least, a bunch of sweet fuzzy rodents, to add some contrast to the post (and the expo). NOT feeder rodents. Just some sweet little mice/hamsters/guinea pigs/rabbits to keep as pets.

And that’s it! Naturally, I didn’t manage to photograph every single animal – there were literally thousands of them. But I tried my best to capture most species!

So if you feel like there’s nothing to do in your city, try and scan local news websites in search for expos like this. Not everyone’s a fan of reptiles, but there are expos of all different kinds – with cats, dogs, plants, robots and AI and many more. Of course, a lot depends on where you live – huge cities might host such events every weekend, smaller ones may only have one or two a year. But regardless, simply try and search for such niche events in your area. It’s a great way to break the routine of city life. 🙂

P.S. Don’t be concerned with the size of the boxes the animals were in. They all had enough space and – in most cases – they were only put in these enclosures temporarily, for the day. The animals looked perfectly fine and healthy and the breeders all seemed professional!

• Misc
• Travel