Before this rediculous pissing contest started, my intent was to find out how interested the private sector was to find some common ground with the feds on keeping venomous snakes. I am a curator at a major reptile zoo in South Dakota( my opinions are purely my own), and was contacted by the Federal Fish and Game to assist in an illegal venomous collection confiscation in Colorado of over 100 snakes, as well as several others in neighboring states. During this confiscation I spent several days with this Federal agent, who frankly is really pissed off at people keeping snakes illegally and immorally. After several days with him we came up with several good ideas for both sides of the coin, I wanted to test the water with you people on this. You people are far to defensive to hear anything other than your rights are being infringed upon. My point is all of the bites and "illegal" activity this year has really gotten the feds attention. If we all want this hobby to be here in 5 years something must be done! Access to av is a number 1 step. Florida has an av bank which is O.K. but not accessible to 49 other states (realistically) they fly serum all the way to Ohio, yet it is not needed because the zoo's in the area already supplied the serum and had much more on hand. My point is, why do zoo's have to be responsible for your mistakes? A gentleman bitten in Ohio ( or somewhere close) by his "pet" cobra required serum, the local zoo supplied the serum, their keeper was soon after bitten by a Suphan Cobra, had no more serum, so it was borrowed from another zoo, now they have no serum. See... because of one persons inablility to be prepared for a bite has put many more people at severe risk!! it's a dominoe effect! see...

So my point was to help you figure out a reasonable way to make everyone happy. No one is interested in helping themselves, so I am no longer interested in offering any help in your name, my ability to work with these wonderful animals is not at risk. Yours is! So drop the defensiveness and help everyone out. After all this crap in this thread from everyone, I am not sure how I will respond to the feds when they ask me " should private people keep venomous snakes"?

P.S Budman I have no respect and do not condone your behavior, however it is yours to be proud of, Please try some legitamate documented research in the future and actually accomplish something that may or may not be of future value to all.

[ Show Entire Thread ]