Authored by Tom Williams
Moving with Reptiles
A few months ago I moved house. Only a few miles into the town but it was a few miles enough to be stressful and even more stressful when you are renting a property and we had one day to move the whole house, including all our pets! I went in to recruitment overdrive and managed to rope in a couple of friends, one of which is a reptile keeper himself, to help with the move and the reptiles were the first priority.
My reptiles were kept in the old house, a few scattered around various rooms in display vivariums but most kept in the spare room at the back of the house. At the new house, the plan was to convert one of the brick outhouses into a reptile house with plans to insulate and heat the room which measure about 3m x 3m. So we started loading the animals into bags and containers and lifting the vivariums and tanks into the two cars we were using to move the animals.
On arrival at the new pad the shed planned as the new reptiles home had been left full of old tools, lawn mowers shelves on every wall containing everything you could possibly need to build and maintain your own second portable house. Admittedly my first thought was to cancel the reptile shed idea and to move the bed out of the spare room, but after some thought and a few cups of coffee we set about clearing the brick shed and making it hospitable for my animals.
Its been a long few months and we’ve had a few cold nights where the oil radiator has just kept the room up to temperature, the insulation hasn’t gone in yet, but apart from that the move actually went ok. All the animals are happy and its nice to have a space for them to live. There are still tweaks to be made to the reptile room such as the insulation to save heating money and some shelves to be installed but all in all I think its been a success, finally!
