The venomous show was, IMHO, sort of a bust (no pun intended). There were as many Florida Game and Fish people (plainclothes and uniformed) and USFWS agents as there were vendors. Lots of neat animals, but everyone (and I mean everyone) was nervous and edgy it seemed. The fact that they agents were there was probably a good thing on one hand, but they were VERY intrusive. They were on the vendors like white on rice, and seemed just a tad on the condascending side to the lookers on and customers in a lot of cases. Not very cooperative at all. They made it quite clear that they did not want this show to happen and I would imagine they will do whatever they can to make sure it doesn't happen again.



As a side note, Hank Molt was shut down in the first hour or so of the show because he didn't have the 4 zipties around the perimeter of each deli cup. That didn't look too good. If the organizer of the event doesn't know the rules, who does?



They did some things right, though. You couldn't just walk in and buy a venomous animal and walk out with it. If you were a Florida resident, you had to produce your Venomous Animals permit. As far as I know, they were the ONLY people that could take purchased animals out of the show, but it had to be boxed in a padlocked, wooden transport box clearly marked as "Venomous". If you were a Florida resident and did not have a permit, you couldn't buy anything anyway. If you were from out-of-state you could buy an animal but you had to have it shipped back to your homestate via air-freight, unless you happened to have a Florida permit. That prevented unqualified people from just walking and and buying a hot animal and waltzing back out into the public with it. I don't know if out-of-state venomous permits were honored. I wasn't in the market for anything.

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