When I went to college there were significant changes in my life. I had always been interested in the life sciences but now my interests moved to Chemistry. First Organic Chemistry then Analytical Chemistry, then Inorganic Chemistry, then Quantum Chemistry and ended with Protein Chemistry. Between a social life and studies I had little time for the natural world: including frogs.

After a major break up, my life swung back towards an interest in animals. As a coping mechanism, I got a fish tank. I've always loved and the whole aquatic ecosystem. Graggy's house was on the ocean and I'd spend hours each day looking in tide pools. Then there was Jacques Cousteau whose shows made me dream of studying the oceans. So it's understandable that within a few months I had half a dozen tanks. I was still a college student so my collection was mostly cheap wild caught tetras (little did I know how important South America would become in my life). I enjoyed breeding and raising tetras and the number of aquarium grew.

Another break up and another change. I got my first firebelly toad. Having frogs as pets had never come up as an idea for me, but now I threw myself into doing it. Still in college, my limited funds made my collection grow under the guidelines "any frog for under a buck." Actually I paid up to $4 per animals and at the time this limited my collection to Asian wild caught frogs. I soon added NW native frogs (raised from collected tadpoles and eggs) to my collection.

As my skill in caring for and housing these frogs and toads grew, night times in my room became defining. I knew things had to change and with my first group of mantellas the path was set. I had traded offspring from my fish and frogs for a colony of mantellas. Being both beautiful frogs diurnal, these new frogs quickly became my favorites, (the photograph to the left is a female M. viridis, notice the briliant blue ventral markings). I researched and began building enclosure that mimicked the frogs natural habitats. Soon I had my first Mantella viridis tadpole. Sadly it morphed out with spindly leg. With more research into the frog's natural habitat I gained better understanding of their and their tadpoles needs. In the next year, (mantellas are seasonal breeders) I was producing dozens of healthy froglets.

About the same time I was getting into Mantellas, Todd Kelley and Christina Hanson gave me my first Dart frog. A trio of, "Santa Isabel" E. tricolor tadpoles. Months later they gave me some D. auratus tadpoles. I did well with the dart frogs and through starving and trading, I was able to slowly grow my collection.