Last weekend’s North American Reptile Breeders Conference in Arlington may have been slightly smaller than the standard shows in February, but only just. With a specialty in captive-bred reptiles and amphibians, the NARBC isn’t just the biggest reptile show in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. It’s the show you need to hit for exotic color morphs, cage ideas, and essential accessories. Oh, and it’s hard not to start impersonating Steve Irwin when viewing some of the stunning animals out here:
This last one was a particularly sentimental moment. This is a big female black-throat monitor (Varanus albigularis var.), a medium-sized monitor lizard native to southern Africa. The reason why this one melted me a bit is that V. albigularis is a close cousin to the savannah monitor, Varanus exanthematicus, and she was both the size and general temperament of my late savannah monitor Afsan. She would have been a handful at that size, but out of all of the animals I saw at the NARBC show, she was the one I would have tried to bring home.
