Shinja Rodents is owned and operated by myself, Mark Haas. I graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in Computer Engineering and currently work as a software engineer. Shinja means “holy snakes” in Japanese and the logo is a mixture of those characters. My mother was my inspiration for the name.
When I was a kid I absolutely adored animals and drove my mother crazy begging her to buy them. I even bred Siberian dwarf hamsters when I was in elementary school. During high school, one of my best friends Sean Travis bought a couple of snakes - a Brazilian rainbow boa and a Surinam red tail boa. He took me to all kinds of strange exotic animal pet stores, and I ended up buying my first snake, a Columbian red tail boa.
Off to college Sean and I went. The collection of rare reptiles had to be put on hold because needless to say college students aren't too wealthy. After graduating college I began breeding ball pythons.
To be honest, I didn’t know the first thing about breeding snakes. Along with the help of experienced breeders, I finally got the hang of it. Sadly in 2004, Sean was killed in a car accident. He was a great friend that lived life to its fullest. We always talked about getting into breeding snakes, which is what lead me to the start of Shinja, LLC.
Over the years I have expanded my company to a larger degree than I ever imagined. Now my collection not only consists of ball pythons but also poison arrow dart frogs. Who knows what my passion for animals will lead to next!
