• Posted 12/19/2024.
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    I am still waiting on my developer to finish up on the Classifieds Control Panel so I can use it to encourage members into becoming paying members. Google Adsense has become a real burden on the viewing of this site, but honestly it is the ONLY source of income now that keeps it afloat. I tried offering disabling the ads being viewed by paying members, but apparently that is not enough incentive. Quite frankly, Google Adsense has dropped down to where it barely brings in enough daily to match even a single paid member per day. But it still gets the bills paid. But at what cost?

    So even without the classifieds control panel being complete, I believe I am going to have to disable those Google ads completely and likely disable some options here that have been free since going to the new platform. Like classified ad bumping, member name changes, and anything else I can use to encourage this site to be supported by the members instead of the Google Adsense ads.

    But there is risk involved. I will not pay out of pocket for very long during this last ditch experimental effort. If I find that the membership does not want to support this site with memberships, then I cannot support your being able to post your classified ads here for free. No, I am not intending to start charging for your posting ads here. I will just shut the site down and that will be it. I will be done with FaunaClassifieds. I certainly don't need this, and can live the rest of my life just fine without it. If I see that no one else really wants it to survive neither, then so be it. It goes away and you all can just go elsewhere to advertise your animals and merchandise.

    Not sure when this will take place, and I don't intend to give any further warning concerning the disabling of the Google Adsense. Just as there probably won't be any warning if I decide to close down this site. You will just come here and there will be some sort of message that the site is gone, and you have a nice day.

    I have been trying to make a go of this site for a very long time. And quite frankly, I am just tired of trying. I had hoped that enough people would be willing to help me help you all have a free outlet to offer your stuff for sale. But every year I see less and less people coming to this site, much less supporting it financially. That is fine. I tried. I retired the SerpenCo business about 14 years ago, so retiring out of this business completely is not that big if a step for me, nor will it be especially painful to do. When I was in Thailand, I did not check in here for three weeks. I didn't miss it even a little bit. So if you all want it to remain, it will be in your hands. I really don't care either way.

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    Some people have indicated that finding the method to contribute is rather difficult. And I have to admit, that it is not all that obvious. So to help, here is a thread to help as a quide. How to become a contributing member of FaunaClassifieds.

    And for the record, I will be shutting down the Google Adsense ads on January 1, 2025.
  • Responding to email notices you receive.
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    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

For those that don't know what happened -- Respiratory Virus in Ball Pythons

This affected 3 other people, one of which I know lost both snakes he owned. The others I'm not sure what happened with their animals. The person that sent me the infected snake was getting out of the business and had a lot of high-dollar animals and a lot of imports. He was mass-selling everything after I came forward in order to get as much money as he could before the information spread and he was caught. There is no telling how many other people bought animals from Wyatt and ended up with this virus in their collections.

And unfortunately, if anyone did have this virus, I doubt they would come forward and handle it the way I did. Most people would rather hide it and continue on or sell out to save their own skins. After the way I was vilified and crucified when I came forward with it, I can pretty much assure you no one else will do the same.
 
JenHarrison said:
Unfortunately all research on it stopped shortly after I euthanized my collection due to lack of funds. I could not afford to keep plugging money into it after everything I already lost, and despite a bunch of promises, no one else in the hobby donated either. So basically if it hits someone else, there's still no idea what it is, how long it incubates, whether an animal can be an asymptomatic carrier and if so for how long, how long it can live on an inanimate surface, what disinfectants can kill it, or how it can be treated in the animal. Nothing.
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Glad to see you back with us!

It is a shame that there's no funding for such research, given the potential of a tragic impact on our reptile community if we find no way to cease the spread of this unknown "virus".
 
It is for sure a virus, if you go back through the timeline in the blog, you'll see the entries as we worked through the different tests and possibilities. The last thing I got from Florida was that it was likely some hybrid between OMPV and something else, an RNA virus, possibly a reovirus. They didn't have the funds to do DNA mapping like he wanted to.

I had added info from my subsequent posts into the main post, so that is everything is in one place for those looking for information.
 
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Here are a couple good links about paramyxovirus and snakes. Most were written by Dr. Elliot Jacobson, DVM, Ph.D. The main person that worked on my dead bodies, organs, tissue samples, blood samples, etc. and gave me the majority of the information I was working with. As you'll see in the article from the University of Florida website, the stages of illness described are almost dead-on to what I saw in my snakes, along with the problem of some snakes showing no signs and dying instantly overnight, and others showing symptoms going through all 4 stages. The end result is a convulsive neurologic condition prior to death.


http://www.vetmed.ufl.edu/college/departments/sacs/research/OphidianParamyxovirus.html

http://jvdi.org/cgi/reprint/7/1/72.pdf

http://www.jstor.org/pss/20095233
 
Well I just came across this and am pretty glad I did. I brought 3 snakes from him at a expo the year defore last and as soon as they shed the infection showed up(he had about 30 females he was selling). I lost them and two more. I had taken them to the vet and spent lots of money but with no luck. But lucky for me I had separated them when the signs showed up. He was at an expo about 4 months ago and his collection had dropped, don't know if he sold or they had died. I just hope that this doesn't spread it is very bad and when I see him again I can now confront him. Thanks for the info!
 
Jesus Christ. He's still selling snakes? Bossroy, you can go on the BOI and search for his big thread that involved what happened with me. There is a lot of information there. I HIGHLY reccommend that you post a new thread to the BOI (don't add to the long one, people won't want to go through the whole thing), so that it brings it to the forefront and people see the warning and stop buying from him before this gets out of control. We can't discuss BOI-related things here which is why it needs to be brought there.
 
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speechless, how many more collections have to suffer before someone goes after this guy. so if this virus is airborn which we do not know but say it is he put everyone elses stock at the show at risk. I guess i will only buy from nerd at least i know what he has or does not have in this matter.
 
great write up this has been a concern for me as a friend lost snakes to that I will pass on this thread to him to read,I will know now what to look out for as would hate to lose collection at least there are symptons to look out for and what to do about it,act quickly thats for sure..cheers.
 
JenHarrison said:
We can't discuss BOI-related things here which is why it needs to be brought there.
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Readers should note that this is a discussion area, but BOI relevant posts are only allowed in the BOI. (The post describing how your issue began was pretty borderline, Jen, as it stated the name of the seller, the transaction, and the problem; but I know your goal wasn't to rehash that here.)
 
gsrept said:
speechless, how many more collections have to suffer before someone goes after this guy. so if this virus is airborn which we do not know but say it is he put everyone elses stock at the show at risk. I guess i will only buy from nerd at least i know what he has or does not have in this matter.
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But don't we have to play nice? This guy started pretty much just like the ones we "harrass" now.:rofl:
 
JenHarrison said:
Unfortunately all research on it stopped shortly after I euthanized my collection due to lack of funds. I could not afford to keep plugging money into it after everything I already lost, and despite a bunch of promises, no one else in the hobby donated either. So basically if it hits someone else, there's still no idea what it is, how long it incubates, whether an animal can be an asymptomatic carrier and if so for how long, how long it can live on an inanimate surface, what disinfectants can kill it, or how it can be treated in the animal. Nothing.
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Jen, some of us had been in touch with the University. Basically, the bottom line is there was no way to guarantee that the money donated for IBD research would be used for that purpose. They have general across the board donation sites and some specific donation slots, but nothing specific for IBD/reptile research.

An attempt to see if a mailbox for IBD research donations could be instituted fell though as did an attempt to see if they could install a Paypal button specifically for that purpose.
 
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there is a fine line between getting the truth out there and harassment. I agree we need to expose the people that are not on the up and up but once they are out people can make there own decision based on the facts, not weather or not the person knows how to keep the animals which most flippers and exporters do not. they deal in volume get them in and out as fast as you can. is it to your standards of keeping them probably not just like its not to mine but that just means we do not have to buy from them as do other people
 
gsrept said:
there is a fine line between getting the truth out there and harassment. I agree we need to expose the people that are not on the up and up but once they are out people can make there own decision based on the facts, not weather or not the person knows how to keep the animals which most flippers and exporters do not. they deal in volume get them in and out as fast as you can. is it to your standards of keeping them probably not just like its not to mine but that just means we do not have to buy from them as do other people
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True.

Well, Jen got the truth out here about Wyatt, and he's still in business spreading diseases....and it's people of his ilk that risk the rest of our collections.

Maybe if more of us lost something, we wouldn't display such cavil attitudes about the tactics used to ensure that flippers are doing business the SAFE way.
 
hhmoore said:
Readers should note that this is a discussion area, but BOI relevant posts are only allowed in the BOI. (The post describing how your issue began was pretty borderline, Jen, as it stated the name of the seller, the transaction, and the problem; but I know your goal wasn't to rehash that here.)
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Not at all. This issue was already brought to the BOI years ago, and my aim in posting this was not to discuss the seller or the transaction or the relation to him in all of this. I listed him simply so that people can do their own research on the BOI should they choose to delve into that aspect of it (also why I advised this new potential victim to bring any details regarding the seller and his experienced to the BOI, although he can discuss the virus and what he saw in his animals here on this thread). My aim in posting this was for people that either missed when it happened, or people that are new to the hobby and did not know it happened. I don't want anyone else to ever go through this, and wanted people to know that this virus is out there, how it can be transmitted, what symptoms to look for, and what most testing outcomes will be to confirm that it is probably the same virus that hit my collection. Also to teach people to put a huge emphasis on quarantine, and researching the people they choose to conduct transactions with. Prevention prevention prevention. I want others to learn from MY mistakes, so that they don't have to make the same ones.

Deb, the research on IBD was separate from this virus research. The donations were supposed to go directly toward my bill with Dr. Jacobson's department, thus allowing him to continue doing the various tests and cultures and having a way to pay for it. But it didn't happen, and after it went over a thousand dollars, we had to cap it off.
 
bossroy said:
Well I just came across this and am pretty glad I did. I brought 3 snakes from him at a expo the year defore last and as soon as they shed the infection showed up(he had about 30 females he was selling). I lost them and two more. I had taken them to the vet and spent lots of money but with no luck. But lucky for me I had separated them when the signs showed up. He was at an expo about 4 months ago and his collection had dropped, don't know if he sold or they had died. I just hope that this doesn't spread it is very bad and when I see him again I can now confront him. Thanks for the info!
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Roy,
What show was this?
 
Hey Cheryl! Just came back about 2 months ago or so. Started doing BP's again, have 3 now. But not planning on getting into it as much as I did back then. I would love to, but losing them all just burned me out really bad, made me lose the motivation to keep up on a large collection. I started talking to Anthony McCain a lot this summer and he kind of nudged me to try it out again, even if just one or two projects. So I thought about how I had wanted to work on an extremely reduced pattern, extremely high contrast albino. That's what I'm piecing together now. I also bought a really nice lesser boy, with the plan of putting him with this pretty normal female I adopted from VaRR. She was the first snake I started with after all that time, and a lot of people mentioned how unique she was, so I bought her a boyfriend to see what comes of it. Don't really think I'll move much past these two projects. There is one other cool project I would love to work on, but I just don't have that kind of cash, and am too hesitant to invest in it after what happened. But who knows, maybe some day.

How are you? How's everything with the collection?
 
It's really good to see you. I hated to see it all fall apart the way it did. I'm glad to hear your going slow. Wish I could go back and slow down some times! As it turns out I've sold off all the corn snakes. Still plugging away at trying to make piebalds. Sucking just as bad at it as I was back then. Still with the "next year". Bla bla bla. Gets so even I'm tired of hearing about how bad I suck at this! On the bright side we did buy that property 3years ago and it turns out I'm not a bad homesteader at all. I raise a process a lot of our families food right here on the homestead. Feels nice to be good at something for a change! Check out the homestead pics on my website and you'll see! And you never know maybe THIS year really will be my year with the snakes for a change!
 
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