SteveHiss
New member
First of all, this is Kelli posting under Steve's account. I am unable to post under the KelliH account, as that account has been banned. Secondly, to those of you that were not active members of Fauna back in the summer of 2005, and are not aware of the tragedy that befell on my family, please save yourself some time and hit the back button on your browser.
I will make this as short as I can. Most of you that have been active on Fauna for awhile know that the root cause behind my banning was the death of my son Hayden. The night of his death a few of my friends were in chat and came up with the idea of setting up a fund and/or auction of some sort to help out with the medical and funeral expenses. The idea was submitted to Rich and initially he was unsure if he wanted to do that here on Fauna, and probably wasn't really sure if it was the right thing to do in any event. So I guess it took him a day or so to make a decision. In the interim, Chris Johnson of TSE offered to host the auctions on his forum based website. Then apparantly Rich decided it would be ok to host the auctions here on Fauna. This is where the confusion and ugliness began.
You must understand that I was in no shape mentally to comprehend anything at that time, as my beautiful son, the light of my life, had suddenly been yanked out of my life forever. I barely even remember the weeks following his death, I just know it was the most horrible and the worst pain I have ever felt in my life and to say it was hard to cope with it would be an understatement to say the least.
To continue, there was some sort of conflict between Chris and Rich about the fund/auctions. Honestly, I still don't understand what the problem was, but I know they had some conflict about it. I had no idea any of that was going on behind the scenes of course. Until one night I got a call from Chris Johnson and he informed me that Rich had not wanted Chris to run any of the auctions on the TSE site because Rich was concerned that it would pull traffic away from Fauna. I was shocked and very, very hurt by this. And worst of all, I believed it. There are some threads about all of this matter here on Fauna.
So as time went on, I tried to get past it, but I couldn't seem to do it. Occassionally there would be comments made that I interpreted as being negative regarding The Hayden Fund. Each time I read one of these comments it brought it all back "to the top" so to speak.
I have had a lot of time to reflect on all of this, a lot of time to really think hard about the situation. I have come to the conclusion that I was wrong, and that Rich was not trying to make sure all the traffic stayed on Fauna rather than other sites like the TSE forum site. Rich and I had spoken on the phone last June about this. It was just a day or two before the first anniversary of Hayden's death, and I was very emotional. I had agreed to post an apology here in the feedback forum if he would delete all the ugly threads about the Hayden Fund. I wanted them deleted because when a Google search is done using my son's name, all these horrible, negative threads on Fauna would come up in the search. I did not want Hayden's friends, teachers, and grandparents being hurt by all that, and wanted Rich to just delete them forever. I never made that apology publically here (although I have numerous times privately) because this is painful for me, and I know how these threads can escalate into ugliness. I just didn't want to do that at that time. I was not ready to put it all out here like this, and that is why I was banned from Fauna.
Rich, I am saying it here, for anyone and everyone to read. I am very sorry, and I was wrong. I am not saying this because I want to be unbanned, I do not care about that. I am saying it because I want and need to, and because it is the truth, and I am saying it because I think both Rich and myself need some closure on all of this.
I will make this as short as I can. Most of you that have been active on Fauna for awhile know that the root cause behind my banning was the death of my son Hayden. The night of his death a few of my friends were in chat and came up with the idea of setting up a fund and/or auction of some sort to help out with the medical and funeral expenses. The idea was submitted to Rich and initially he was unsure if he wanted to do that here on Fauna, and probably wasn't really sure if it was the right thing to do in any event. So I guess it took him a day or so to make a decision. In the interim, Chris Johnson of TSE offered to host the auctions on his forum based website. Then apparantly Rich decided it would be ok to host the auctions here on Fauna. This is where the confusion and ugliness began.
You must understand that I was in no shape mentally to comprehend anything at that time, as my beautiful son, the light of my life, had suddenly been yanked out of my life forever. I barely even remember the weeks following his death, I just know it was the most horrible and the worst pain I have ever felt in my life and to say it was hard to cope with it would be an understatement to say the least.
To continue, there was some sort of conflict between Chris and Rich about the fund/auctions. Honestly, I still don't understand what the problem was, but I know they had some conflict about it. I had no idea any of that was going on behind the scenes of course. Until one night I got a call from Chris Johnson and he informed me that Rich had not wanted Chris to run any of the auctions on the TSE site because Rich was concerned that it would pull traffic away from Fauna. I was shocked and very, very hurt by this. And worst of all, I believed it. There are some threads about all of this matter here on Fauna.
So as time went on, I tried to get past it, but I couldn't seem to do it. Occassionally there would be comments made that I interpreted as being negative regarding The Hayden Fund. Each time I read one of these comments it brought it all back "to the top" so to speak.
I have had a lot of time to reflect on all of this, a lot of time to really think hard about the situation. I have come to the conclusion that I was wrong, and that Rich was not trying to make sure all the traffic stayed on Fauna rather than other sites like the TSE forum site. Rich and I had spoken on the phone last June about this. It was just a day or two before the first anniversary of Hayden's death, and I was very emotional. I had agreed to post an apology here in the feedback forum if he would delete all the ugly threads about the Hayden Fund. I wanted them deleted because when a Google search is done using my son's name, all these horrible, negative threads on Fauna would come up in the search. I did not want Hayden's friends, teachers, and grandparents being hurt by all that, and wanted Rich to just delete them forever. I never made that apology publically here (although I have numerous times privately) because this is painful for me, and I know how these threads can escalate into ugliness. I just didn't want to do that at that time. I was not ready to put it all out here like this, and that is why I was banned from Fauna.
Rich, I am saying it here, for anyone and everyone to read. I am very sorry, and I was wrong. I am not saying this because I want to be unbanned, I do not care about that. I am saying it because I want and need to, and because it is the truth, and I am saying it because I think both Rich and myself need some closure on all of this.
. My first impression when seeing respected members of the greater reptile community having to post under their spouse's names was that something is wrong with this picture, and it is. What has always made Fauna ugly is not the uncovering of thievery, scams, etc, but the personality spats that arise here that are frequently unique to the internet. While "good" reasons have often been quoted to keep all things here as archival reference material .... hard to buy much of that ...... this whole scenario is an example of why some threads should have been deep-sixed long ago. Whatever "good" their existence maintains is far out-weighed by the pain and ill-feelings they arouse whenever thought of or seen again. I believe that the internet equivalent of "burying the hatchet" has a move where the delete key is in play. Send such things to the Twilight Zone, and let them enjoy the reading 
