On January 18, 2026 at 10am through 12pm Arkansas State fair grounds hosted an exotic reptile show.

This event happens three times a year spread out throughout the year. 

The point of this event is to give the public a chance to come and learn about reptiles by talking to experienced breeders who join together as a community for these events. 

Individuals can adopt these reptiles for themselves as pets with the guidance of these breeders. 

Some of these individuals are standalone breeders and some work with a type of organization.

I received the opportunity to talk to both of these types of vendors and their intriguing stories.

No one explains what’s happening better than the breeders themselves. 

Bobby Neal says “im here with the central arkansas herpetological society. We are a group of like minded individuals that enjoy going out and herping. And field herping is when you’re going out into the wild and looking for snakes. So we are a group of diverse individuals and some of us do a lot of captive breeding of non native animals. So you’ll have people in our group that breed boas and pythons and some of our nonnative snakes.”

Bobby tells us a little bit more about what his group does, he states “We typically meet once a month and we meet at one of the central arkansas library systems libraries. We are a group that’s open to the public and we accept anybody that is interested in reptiles and amphibians whether it is native or non native. We like to have a small group of people who like to go out and share our experiences”

Bobby goes even further to tell us what got him involved in this event.

Bobby says, “ I’ve been a part of reptile education ever since I was knee high to a coke bottle. Ever since I was a kid I’ve never had a fear of snakes. I was never taught a fear of snakes. I would find that in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, everybody is interested in snakes. By the time you get into middle school people are starting to get taught that snakes are scary. And so by that people we have people that are apprehensive. And by the time you get into high school and above you have a large group of people that are afraid of snakes. And so that’s what we try to do, we try to counter some of the negative education with snakes. And this is more of our opportunity to come and do that” 

Like many others Bobby received a big sense of community out of this event.

Bobby quotes “I like to meet with people and hopefully be a conduit to help them and get over their fear of reptiles and have a better understanding of the animals we have in arkansas”

The next person I interviewed is Serenity Putman.

She explains that a big part of these types of events for her and her family is the community.

Besides just selling reptiles and merchandise, Serenity was more interested in educating new comers. 

At their booth they only sold ball pythons but at home they raised a plethora of 356 reptiles, like, crested geckos, bobas, leopard geckos, and king snakes. 

She explains the processes of how these reptiles get transported to the event and back home.

Serenity says “it isn’t hard to transport them, we bring snake bags and bag everybody up. We have little identification cards for everybody. That way when we get back home we can find their tub in our rack system and put them back.”

She tells how it is a big commitment to own one of these reptiles because of how long they can live. 

They live up to 30 years, attempting to out live people.

The next vendor we talked to was Murry Meryer.

He was with paladin exotics out of st louis missouri.

He specializes in tarantulas, scorpions and exotic inverts.

Murry shares a little bit about his story with us about how he got started. 

Murry says “A long time ago i was dating a girl back before i was into any exotics and she told me that she wanted a tarantula and i was like ‘oh my gosh, what’s wrong with you but I guess I’ll buy you a tarantula’ so we went out to an expo and i bought her a tarantula and she ended up not being the best pet owner so I ended up having to do the care and I learned more and more about them. And then you know here we are 10 years later and this is what I do for a living.” 

Bobby says “I really like talking to people. I had a lot of different sales jobs in the past that were really not fulfilling. But, you know you get a good feeling out of selling these to people, because some people work their whole day, their whole week and you know this is what gets them through their day.” 

Near the end of the event we talked to one more person, named Shane Pitts who had a lot to say.

Shane breeds and sells leopard geckos and isopods.

His goal is to have everything accessible enough in a kit that you can get right there.

Shane says “we went to our first reptile show repticon in Memphis, where we are from. My son really wanted a crested gecko but I really wanted a leopard gecko. I just fell in love with them and decided to start breeding leopard geckos”

He talks a little bit about why he does this event.

Shane says “this here, just the experience of interacting like this conversation right here, being able to share our love of the hobby with good customers” 

He says the best way to buy reptiles is not from pet stores but from breeders directly. 

He explains that big industries do not care about genetics because they just want to mass produce them.

Shane quotes “Some of the big names, you know, because their getting them from, i call them puppy mills, you know, and they might house 20 or so in one container where as each one of my babies are in its own little container its own little house and i know what and how much they are eating” 

This event gave reptile enthusiasts a place to share their love for these animals.

It gave other people a chance to learn more about them and encourage them that they do not need to be afraid of these animals.