By Foster Guns, Staff Writer
Terror. An emotion that flipping through the air might be associated with. Or seeing a snake. For junior Fenton McKown, these two things have become a daily routine.
At a young age, McKown was introduced to the mesmerizing world of reptiles.
“I was never taught to fear them,” McKown said. “I grew up always being outside with my dad looking for all types of reptiles.”
McKown and his dad have had amazing finds in their adventures together, but he found that watching programs on Animal Planet made his love for reptiles grow even stronger.
“My favorite guy was Jeff Corwin,” McKown said. “He became my idol pretty quick after I started watching him.”
His earliest memory of being captivated by a reptile was in early 2017, when his dad took him to a reptile store. There, he saw a five-foot lizard walking around freely, and after this outing, McKown’s heart was set on having reptiles of his own.
“I went home and did a bunch of research on it and realized they’re really hard to take care of for someone who has no experience in keeping reptiles,” McKown said. “So I started with something a bit more manageable: a blue-tongued skink.”
McKown’s blue-tongued skink was just the beginning. His collection of reptiles has grown drastically over time.
“I have 12 snakes. I have three poison dart frogs that are adults that are my permanent residents, and I’ve got somewhere around 15 babies that I’m still trying to sell,” McKown said. “I have an absolutely absurd amount of mourning geckos, about 30 if I had to guess.”
In order to make the money to sustain his captive-bred snakes, McKown sells baby poison dart frogs.
“I naturally breed two of the dart frogs and wait for the new hatch of babies, then drive up to Virginia and sell them to reptile stores and specific buyers,” McKown said. “The frogs are not poisonous in captivity – it depends on what they eat in the wild.”
McKown’s hobbies don’t stop at his love for reptiles. Another unusual hobby of his includes “tricking.”
Tricking is doing combinations of flips, kicks and twists off the ground, opposed to G Tramp, which is flips, kicks and twists on a trampoline.
McKown had been first introduced to
G Tramp by his step-brother.
“I was 11 and my step-brother always had new hobbies, so I would learn to do what he did,” McKown said. “He began to do flips on trampolines, but eventually plateaued and forgot about flips.”
In late 2019, McKown realized he had way too many snakes to take care of, so he stepped away from the reptile hobby and recalled how much fun he had while tricking. This sparked his interest once more and led him to where he is today.
“It was almost like what it was like when I started (tricking). I immediately knew that’s what I wanted to do,” McKown said.
McKown is completely self-taught when it comes to on-ground tricks and takes advantage of film to improve his combos.
“I film everything I do so I can coach myself and tweak the small things that really make the combos,” McKown said.
Despite being self-taught, he attends tricking gatherings in inland North Carolina, where he meets some amazing mentors and friends who help enhance his capabilities.
“It’s a super-underground sport, so everyone that’s in it is really passionate about it, so everyone gets together and trains in a really chill environment,” McKown said.
The community still has some big names, one of which is Michael Guthrie. He is a champion in the world of tricking and is known for doing the first ever “Triple Full Swing through Triple Cork & Quadruple Cork.”
“To me, Michael Guthrie is like LeBron James,” McKown said. “It just seems so crazy to meet Michael Guthrie one day – he only has like 20,000 followers on Instagram.”
Some people will want to throw some crazy combo the first time they trick to be as good as others, but tricking gives McKown the freedom to improve at his own pace.
“If you want to work on something, you can,” Mckown said. “There are no levels or anything, just working on skills and building confidence, so eventually you can move on to harder skills.”
McKown doesn’t want to be a professional tricker, but he still sees a future in that hobby. It’s his first passion – snakes – that make him dream of having a job in the area of wildlife biology.
Not many people are this passionate about any hobbies, yet alone two.
“It’s all I ever think about in school. When a lecture starts, I daydream about tricking combos and how good I can get if I stick with it,” McKown said. “It’s just two things I’m super passionate about and I am so stoked to talk about them.”
Sophomore Foster Guns can be reached at 24gunsfo54@daretolearn.org.
