Guest Mnytime Posted June 29, 2003 Report Share Posted June 29, 2003 (edited) Though it is impossible to import them I would love to get a few of these babies. http://www.heptune.com/komodo10.jpg I think the line should be drawn somewhere. You would be surprised how many people ask me if they can get these. It's stupid. Those aren't pets. Shit, most of the people that want these things from me shouldn't even raise children. You can say the something about all of the more dangerous animals. Though like I said it's impossible to have them. Edited June 29, 2003 by Mnytime Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Use3D Posted June 29, 2003 Report Share Posted June 29, 2003 You can say the something about all of the more dangerous animals. Though like I said it's impossible to have them. Well that's where the debate comes in. People who are really into herps should be able to keep whatever they want, by that I mean educated herptologists who knows the risks and knows how to house the animals properly. I would feel more comfortable if someone of your obvious experience owned a komodo dragon, but if you could get one it would also mean these clowns I see everyday could get one, so might as well make them completely unavailable. At my store we don't sell gators or big snakes, like retics or anacondas, or even burmese pythons. Our customer base is simply not prepared to keep those kind of animals so we don't bother. It's nice actually, for the benefit of the animals. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
connoisseur series500 Posted June 29, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 29, 2003 I was busy all day and I come back to check the threads and WOW! What stories! I particularly liked Dan's about the yellowjackets. Imagine waking up to see all those dead bodies all around. And the one about the big spider in Hong Kong. That reminds me.... I stayed in a house for 6-8 months outside of Bangkok in the suburbs before actually moving into the city. This house like many in Thailand is raised on sticks to avoid the annual floods. I used to hang out under the house, which would be the equivalent of a big patio with the house above you. My bathroom was a bathhouse with the latrine something you were to squat on and flush by tossing bowls of water into it. The water was frigging cold every morning as there was no hot water at all. I remember that I would come back in the evenings half-drunk from the partying and I would stumble into this bathhouse with bugs flying about in the air attracted by the lights. The air was always sticky and humid. I remember encountering a big spider in the bathhouse. It looked huge to me and I think it must have been some large species of wolf spider or something. Anyway, it scared the piss out of me. I would walk up to that damned bathhouse and open the door with a broom handle or something in order to check it out befor going in for my shower. A shower consisted of tossing bowls of water (same procedure as the flush) from water accumulated in a big recepticle. I don't remember the details as to how I got rid of that spider, but it made my life miserable. Incidentally, being the "scorpion expert" that I am, I was never able to find a scorpion in Thailand. The floods make it uninhabitable for them in Bangkok, though I've been told that you can find them in the jungles of Southern Thailand. I remember vacationing in Cancun and I had no problem finding scorpions there. They were all over. Stories of snakes to follow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
connoisseur series500 Posted June 29, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 29, 2003 (edited) Fortunately for me, there are no snakes in Jamaica. Island lore attributes the mongoose as the reason. The mongoose was introduced into the island from India. The idea was to help control the snake population in the sugar cane fields. Apparently, the mongoose killed every damned snake and the island then starting working on the chickens. When I was in my father's car as a kid driving the Jamaican roads at night, we would frequently see a flash as a mongoose ran across the road. At other times during certain seasons, the road would be covered with toads. They would pop under the car tires. It was impossible to avoid them. Sometimes large land crabs would be in the roads as well. There were plenty of interesting roadkills in Jamaica. The only encounter I ever had with a dangerous snake was in that same house in Thailand. I was sitting down under the house as usual when I noticed a snake not far away. It didn't look that big so I grabbed my umbrella and walked up to it. I jabbed it gently and it started to move laterally away from me. As it did so, a certain coloration manifested itself near the snake's head. The next day I told my story to a friend at work and he told me that it was a dangerous krait. He said I was crazy to have provoked it like I had. I told him that if the snake were to make a move for me, I would have let out the umbrella and thwap!! Fortunately, I didn't get the opportunity to test my technique. Edited August 12, 2003 by connoisseur series500 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
connoisseur series500 Posted June 29, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 29, 2003 I knew a guy in Bangkok who was as crazy as Mnytime in terms of his reptile collecting. He actually bred and sold exotic snakes. One of the big sellers was the albino cobra. He had a whole bunch of those. I went over to his place once to see what it was like, and I visited his snake rooms. He had the cages piled up on each other in rows. I began walking down one of those rows and suddenly was startled by a loud HISSSSSS! My hair stood up on my head. One of his albino cobras had hissed me in his cage as I was walking by. I never grew up with snakes and had no pathological fear of them, but when I heard that sound I was in immediate kinship with everyone who has feared snakes since birth. I realized that there is a natural instinct of fear for snakes in humans. Man that is a frightening sound! The snake dealer was bitten once by some kind of viper and he had to be rushed to Bangkok's Snake Farm Hospital for some kind of anti-venom. Mnytime said he had to take some as well. My understanding is that you can't take too much of that stuff as it can be dangerous. I remember the snake dealer telling me that Australia was full of poisonous snakes. Seems to me that Australia has every poisonous little animal. Their spiders are deadly; their snakes; there are is even a little pocket sized octopus that is supposedly deadly. Glad I don't live there! I visited Sydney once, but didn't run into anything. We'll have to ask our friend, Kenny Weir to tell us his stories. Kenny? Let's hear everyone's fish stories as well. I've got a bunch. More later.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mnytime Posted June 29, 2003 Report Share Posted June 29, 2003 (edited) If you are in Australia and see a snake your safest option is to assume it is poisonous. They have 140 different snakes and a good portion of them are poisonous. And odds are one of the snakes you will come across will be one of the top 10 most poisonous. Now in terms of breeding and selling snakes you really can make a pretty penny if you have a clue what you are doing and can Dr. Frankenstein some freaky Color/Pattern/Morphs/Mutations. For example, I have males that can sell easily for $50,000 and as high as $75,000 if I ever wanted to sell those. Though I never sell or give any of my poisonous snakes to anyone who already doesn't have serious experience with them. It's like giving a cocked and loaded gun to a kid without the safety on otherwise. In fact I won't sell or give any snake I have to anyone that doesn't have experience with them. I have had experience with Reptiles going on 20 years now and have been breeding them for about 17 years. Just to give you an idea this guy is selling males of these Piebald Ball Pythons for $25,000 And males of this Platinum Ball Python for $35,000 To give you an idea the size of these, which are generally smaller. They grow to about 4ft but on occasion can reach 5ft. Edited June 29, 2003 by Mnytime Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mnytime Posted June 29, 2003 Report Share Posted June 29, 2003 (edited) Of this guys snakes I think this are his sweetest creations This one he bought sight unseeen and really lucked out on. A female Lavender Albino Ball Python. These are a Boas. The first he considers his prized Boa. You can see from the two pictures of it that it has one pink eye and one gray eye. I will admit he has some really sweet snakes but I still think mine are still much much much better. Edited June 29, 2003 by Mnytime Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mnytime Posted June 29, 2003 Report Share Posted June 29, 2003 (edited) This guy has a serious Rodent breeding system going on. Actually that's saves a lot of money. If you have a huge collection like he has it can cost up to $1000 a week to buy Rodents. Edited June 29, 2003 by Mnytime Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
connoisseur series500 Posted June 29, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 29, 2003 Wow, some of those boas are beautiful, Mnytime. (Well, as far as a snake can be called "beautiful" anyway.) That's one bigtime snake collector there. My friend in Thailand bought his mice at the "weekend market." He didn't have that kind of volume, and I don't believe he had anything in those incredible price ranges; but he apparently made a good living from his trade. I've often wondered what happened to him. He quit the snake business because he began to encounter trouble at airport customs desks when he carried his snakes out of Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok. He felt that the international trafficking of snakes wasn't as easy as it used to be. He went into diving school with the idea of teaching people deepwater diving. This guy was strange. You know what they say about snake people, don't you Mnytime? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mnytime Posted June 29, 2003 Report Share Posted June 29, 2003 Was your friend a trapper? They really get screwed. They get paid $500-$1000 by a middle man who than turns around and sells the snake to the big breeders from $12,000-$50,000 depending on the mutations. Now $500 for someone in Africa or Asia is a lot but compared to what the guy selling it to the breeders you can see the screwing they are getting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Use3D Posted June 30, 2003 Report Share Posted June 30, 2003 Jesus those ball pythons above are amazing. I've only seen morphs like that in pictures. I had no idea they were so expensive, i figured the $4,000 range at the most. I've only recently heard of the odd-eyed morphs. Pretty sweeet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noj Posted June 30, 2003 Report Share Posted June 30, 2003 A friend of mine named Peter had a pet Capuchin monkey from South America named Mickey. He was all brown, a very simple looking monkey. Noisy, funny facial expressions and a prehensile tail if I recall. One day I was over at Peter's house hanging out in the backyard and he decided to take Mickey out of the cage. In an instant, the monkey kicked off his chest and made a bee-line for me, latching onto my leg and biting me. There was a split second where I could have kicked Mickey, but I was worried I would hurt or kill the exotic pet so I made a lackluster attempt to keep him off of me and failed. It took twenty stitches or so to close the wound just below my knee. To this day I wish I would have kicked Mickey like a soccer ball. I used to have a black and white alley cat named Rocky that used to kill a different creature every day. When he was a kitten he cornered the biggest rattlesnake I have ever seen in our backyard, a four-footer. Another time I heard Rocky out on the porch crunching on something so loudly I decided to investigate. He was munching the body of a taratula whose legs were scattered all over the porch. In his prime Rocky killed a full-grown rabbit that was nearly as big as himself and decapitated it clean as a blade. The rabbit's earless head was next to the body on the doormat. Lovely mess to clean up. Old Rocky lived a long time, something like 13 years. One day he was just gone, I figure the coyotes got him. Recently there was a bobcat in our backyard, just liesurely laying in our grass taking a nap. Some Western Tanagers have made a nest in a palm frond in my backyard. The males are bright yellow, pretty striking. About a month ago a red-tailed hawk landed in the backyard and jumped around for several minutes on the ground. I've seen them for years flying over my house, but that was the closest I've ever seen a wild hawk like that--I was right at the window just a few feet away. Deer are constant visitors to my neighborhood. Several times I have awoken to the sound of a deer chewing leaves directly outside my bedroom window. Once a fawn fell in our swimming pool and was panicking when we came outside. My older brother jumped in and rescued it. Another time a fawn was outside running like crazy in circles, yelling in that weird baby-like cry deer have. Its mother was feeding nearby, and I swear she looked mortified by her offspring's behavior. The coolest thing I've seen with deer, though, is two males engaged in a battle over a female--actually clashing horns and battling! Like Wild Discovery at home. There's a flock of exotic birds in Burbank, I think they are escaped pets. Parrots and other ones I don't know what to call, definitely not native. The mother-of-all-stories, however, has to be the time a black panther walked past the fence in my backyard. My mom, dad, brothers, and I all saw it. We even looked at the footprints in the sand, they were a good five inches across. I remember our dog Reno, a good watch dog, was hiding under a table close to the house. She wanted no parts of that cat, for though lean it stood taller than a Rottweiler. The people at the Animal Shelter wouldn't believe us and laughed at us. They thought we were playing a joke on them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noj Posted June 30, 2003 Report Share Posted June 30, 2003 Hot damn that was a long post! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Use3D Posted June 30, 2003 Report Share Posted June 30, 2003 Dude, I would have destroyed that monkey if it came at me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mnytime Posted June 30, 2003 Report Share Posted June 30, 2003 Jesus those ball pythons above are amazing. I've only seen morphs like that in pictures. I had no idea they were so expensive, i figured the $4,000 range at the most. I've only recently heard of the odd-eyed morphs. Pretty sweeet. Honestly those are about average prices for the Piebald and Platinum Ball Pythons. He just bought a Patternless Male from Africa for $50,000 from reading his site. I have a couple of them and I only paid $1500 for each. I deal directly with the trappers. That way they get more money and I get great deals. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Use3D Posted June 30, 2003 Report Share Posted June 30, 2003 Can you post any pictures of your personal collection? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J Larsen Posted June 30, 2003 Report Share Posted June 30, 2003 (edited) The mother-of-all-stories, however, has to be the time a black panther walked past the fence in my backyard. My mom, dad, brothers, and I all saw it. We even looked at the footprints in the sand, they were a good five inches across. I remember our dog Reno, a good watch dog, was hiding under a table close to the house. She wanted no parts of that cat, for though lean it stood taller than a Rottweiler. The people at the Animal Shelter wouldn't believe us and laughed at us. They thought we were playing a joke on them. Noj, this site may explain why they didn't believe you. http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/agarman/bco/fact2.htm I'm sure you saw a large black cat, but you surely didn't see a black panther. Edited June 30, 2003 by J Larsen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
connoisseur series500 Posted June 30, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 30, 2003 Was your friend a trapper? They really get screwed. They get paid $500-$1000 by a middle man who than turns around and sells the snake to the big breeders from $12,000-$50,000 depending on the mutations. Now $500 for someone in Africa or Asia is a lot but compared to what the guy selling it to the breeders you can see the screwing they are getting. No, I believe he was some kind of middleman himself, but he sold to other middlemen. He did not get the big $$$. He didn't trap any snakes in Thailand, but when a cobra was discovered in his village, he was the guy they called! He came out with his hook and bagged it. Don't know what he did with the common cobra. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
connoisseur series500 Posted June 30, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 30, 2003 Interesting story, Noj. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mnytime Posted June 30, 2003 Report Share Posted June 30, 2003 Can you post any pictures of your personal collection? Sorry not only don't I have a digital camera I am not computer literate enough to use one. I still have no idea how to do MP3's or use a scanner. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noj Posted June 30, 2003 Report Share Posted June 30, 2003 The mother-of-all-stories, however, has to be the time a black panther walked past the fence in my backyard. My mom, dad, brothers, and I all saw it. We even looked at the footprints in the sand, they were a good five inches across. I remember our dog Reno, a good watch dog, was hiding under a table close to the house. She wanted no parts of that cat, for though lean it stood taller than a Rottweiler. The people at the Animal Shelter wouldn't believe us and laughed at us. They thought we were playing a joke on them. Noj, this site may explain why they didn't believe you. http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/agarman/bco/fact2.htm I'm sure you saw a large black cat, but you surely didn't see a black panther. Cool man, thanks for the clarification. I'll have to remember to call it a "dark-pigmented mountain lion" or something should I tell the story again in the future. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mnytime Posted June 30, 2003 Report Share Posted June 30, 2003 God, I would love to have Big Cats. Lions, Tigers and Bears, Oh My! Actually not interested in Lions and Bears. But Tigers, Oh My! But once again impossible. Never handled them for one. The paperwork involved I am sure would be a headache and I would have to turn over my entire backyard for them to roam properly. And the lawsuit potential. Of course being the mutiations nut I am I would love White Tigers. I had enough problems when one of my Reticulated Pythons ate the neighbors German Shepard last year. The guy I had hired to take care of my snakes left it alone in the backyard and the neighbors dog played with Pandora's box. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
connoisseur series500 Posted June 30, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 30, 2003 I had enough problems when one of my Reticulated Pythons ate the neighbors German Shepard last year. The guy I had hired to take care of my snakes left it alone in the backyard and the neighbors dog played with Pandora's box. !!! I would imagine that the dog owner was pretty upset. What did you do, pay him off with your life's savings? It's amazing that the city didn't force you to shut down your pet hobbies. That guy who was looking after your place must have been asleep or something. I mean surely a dog doesn't go quietly. Must have been lots of yelping and stuff. Your lucky the snake didn't swallow the apple tree while he was at it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mnytime Posted June 30, 2003 Report Share Posted June 30, 2003 (edited) I didn't pay a thing. The people I hired where insured. Oh there was a good amount of yelping. And where it happened it was over and the snake had started the swallowing portion before anyone could get there in time. And at that point you're just going to piss off the snake. And the city didn't do anything because this guy's dog dug under my wall and came after the snake. Actually the other guy had to pay for the damage to my property and the legal fees. I have decent lawyers. I have never had a snake or any of my other animals escape or get out of were they were supposed to be. I take safety very serious. Edited June 30, 2003 by Mnytime Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
connoisseur series500 Posted June 30, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 30, 2003 Oh there was a good amount of yelping. And where it happened it was over and the snake had started the swallowing portion before anyone could get there in time. And at that point you're just going to piss off the snake. And the city didn't do anything because this guy's dog dug under my wall and came after the snake. Actually the other guy had to pay for the damage to my property and the legal fees. That was one big dumb dog! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_forumlogo.png.a607ef20a6e0c299ab2aa6443aa1f32e.png)
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.