“On Saturday, October 1st, as you entered Ballroom A of the Central Bank Center, you could immediately see rows and rows of tables stretching to the back of the room, with dozens of people shuffling between them. On either side of the main path through the center of the room, there are hundreds of small containers, and inside each of them are a plethora of snakes, lizards, turtles, and other small creatures. The Kentucky Reptile Expo had returned to Lexington.”
That is how I opened my first-ever Rambler article as a freshman in October of 2021. I had recently joined the Rambler due to a spur-of-the-moment decision to add my name to an email list at that year’s Pioneer Palooza. I had never done anything close to school journalism, but I was looking for at least one way to get involved as a new student, especially after a year-plus of social isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I was unsure whether I really wanted to see this newspaper thing through, and I was even more doubtful that the club would survive long enough that my choice would matter. The Rambler was largely in hibernation throughout COVID, and like most student organizations, it was having difficulty recruiting and restarting with the new year. That was before considering larger crises in getting people invested in student journalism, and the effects of conflicts with the Transylvania administration that had occurred just before COVID hit. By the end of that month, the only other student organization I participated in was defunct, and it seemed very possible that the Rambler, despite its long history, could at least temporarily follow.
Four years, eight print releases, and over two hundred articles and photo galleries later, the Rambler is in a considerably stronger place than it was during the doldrums of the pandemic. I was lucky to witness this revival as a four-year contributor to the Rambler, writing nearly fifty more articles after that first piece in October 2021. I also began editing articles in my sophomore year, and starting my junior year, I served on the Rambler Leadership Team as Copy Editor.
In that first article in October 2021, I covered the Kentucky Reptile Expo, a showcase and marketplace for live reptiles and (mostly) related equipment and merchandise that comes to the Central Bank Center roughly every two months. It was the first proper article published that school year, and was titled “Seeing Snakes: the Kentucky Reptile Expo” (I remember brainstorming titles and reading an online article that claimed ‘seeing snakes’ was a 19th-century term for hallucinations; I did not, and still have not verified whether that is in any way true). While that opening paragraph was maybe a bit flowery – a pattern that unfortunately has not disappeared from my writing – it was accurate then, and it remained accurate when, on April 12th, 2025, I made my second visit to the Kentucky Reptile Expo.
Despite being forced from Ballroom A to the smaller Exhibit Hall C (thanks a lot Kentucky Optometric Association), the general layout of the expo was mostly the same. Several tables stretched to the back of the room. Some vendors took up small spaces, while larger vendors had dozens of containers with snakes, turtles, lizards, and others stretching across the room. Some vendors recognized that many of the attendees, especially children, were there to see the animals rather than take them home with them, and set up photo opportunities, such as someone who sold photos with a large python in the corner of the ballroom. There were other animals for sale, such as insects like tarantulas, small parrots, and the large bins of white mice that were displayed by several of the reptile vendors (in 2021, I wrote that it was “unclear whether the mice were being sold as pets or reptile food,” which, with some hindsight, seems like willful ignorance on my part).
Scaled Sisters, a pet vendor and rescue organization based in the Cincinnati area, was one of the booths that I was able to speak with both in 2021 and 2025. The owner of Scaled Sisters, who has been coming to the Kentucky Reptile Expo for around twelve years and had a table full of leopard geckos and bearded dragons, spoke about how they cater to the different audiences that come to the event. She explained, “We do get some people who it’s their first time seeing these reptiles, and we like to introduce them so that they’re not as scared. And then we see people who are looking for their first pet or another pet…and want to ask questions about that and adopt.”
One aspect of the expo that, while present during my first visit, had grown significantly in the intervening years was the prevalence of booths and items with little to no relation to the reptile theme. While live animals and animal-care related booths still took up most of the space, there were numerous booths selling homemade arts and crafts, minerals and gemstones, and action figures and other memorabilia that were primarily targeted towards “nerd culture.” The visual that most emphasized this juxtaposition for me was a booth selling parrots directly next to a vendor who was selling a to-scale model of a Star Wars B1 battle droid.
Betsy Diamond with Mama Growing Magick, a first-time vendor at the expo selling gemstone jewelry, spoke about what drew them to the Kentucky Reptile Expo. Diamond had previously come to the event with their children and had heard good things from artist friends who were also vendors at the expo. Diamond was very complimentary of the expo, stating, “It’s really nicely organized and there have been a lot of great interactions with people.”
During my first visit in October of 2021, the spectre of COVID-19 hung over the expo like a cloud. Most attendees were in masks, and everyone I interviewed emphasized how much smaller that edition of the expo was than in previous years. Three and a half years later, while less obvious, the effects of COVID were still felt by the vendors at the expo. The Scaled Sisters table agreed that the expo had never recovered to its pre-pandemic size, and commented on the effect the pandemic had on their business, saying, “Our rescue side got a lot more surrenders after COVID because people got animals when they were home. But then they had to go back to work.” Even Diamond commented that it seemed that the crowd was a bit smaller than it had been previously when they were just a visitor to the expo. Whether it be businesses that shuttered during COVID or the shift to online sales that vendors in the 2021 event noted that they had been relying on, it seems a smaller event may just be the new normal for the Kentucky Reptile Expo.
Despite the possibility that it will never reach its pre-pandemic heights, the Kentucky Reptile Expo is still the successful staple that it always has been, and serves as a great opportunity for people, whether they be reptile lovers or not, to connect over niche shared interests. It is this sense of excitement and community that was the most obvious commonality between my two visits to the Kentucky Reptile Expo, and something that had not diminished at all in the forty-two months between them.
I write this article now in August of 2025, almost two months after graduating from Transylvania and having moved to a new city. With some distance, I can confidently say that joining the Rambler was one of, if not the best, decisions I made during my time at Transy. It was the only student organization, and one of the only sources of consistency across my four years at Transy. It was a massive help for me both academically, helping me grow my writing and editing skills, and socially, allowing me to meet some of my best friends at Transy. Joining or working with the Rambler is something I strongly encourage for anyone, though if you are reading this article, I am sure you could guess that.
Looking back on my Rambler career, it of course would not be possible without all the Rambler contributors who helped keep the Rambler afloat and have helped me to leave it in a much better place than where I found it, especially the editors in chief whom I was able to work with. Thanks to Allison Spivey, who was the only Rambler contributor who returned after the COVID pause and dedicated her senior year to bringing the Rambler back from the brink. Thanks to Jack Thomas and Josie Grant, who took on the unenviable task of leading an already imperilled student organization straight out of freshman year and gave the Rambler the badly needed continuity in leadership it needed after COVID. Thanks to Katie Axon, whose unparalleled creativity and passion have and will continue to push the Rambler to new heights. Thanks to every person who added to the Rambler over the past two years, whether it be submitting a single article or piece of art, or serving as a multi-year member of our leadership team. And thank you to everyone who has read and supported the Rambler.
The Kentucky Reptile Expo returns to Lexington on October 4th, and is typically held bi-monthly.
