Hi, all! I've been a registered member since 2006 though I really only became active two weeks ago.
Right after I joined Fauna in 2006, we had an electrical house fire. We were displaced for 9 months and I lost my entire collection of herps (some didn't make it; others did but because we had to live in a hotel and then a rental apartment, I couldn't keep them and had to give them to a local reptile rescue). At the time, I was breeding corns and I also had a couple GTPs and two small boas - over 40 snakes in all, plus a Savannah monitor, breeding pair of beardies, two chameleons, two tanks of dart frogs and a tank of red-eyed green tree frogs. I found out the hard way that live animals, while legally considered property, are not covered for care nor loss under typical homeowner policies. So I was on my own with an emergency vet bill of $8k to treat the survivors.
It's been a couple years of dealing with corrupt contractors and dishonest insurance reps as well as intensive therapy for my son, who developed severe PTSD after the fire. I recently started to get "the itch" for herps again, which reminded me of the existence of this site. Diddling around on Fauna, I was amazed to find that I was still a registered member!
I'm (very slowly!) getting going in herps again but this time around I'm being a lot more selective about the animals I choose to keep and breed. I prefer to have a handful of high-quality animals rather than several less-expensive ones of unknown and/or questionable breeding. Also, my husband is somewhat freaked out by the fact that I am now "known" to animal control as an exotics breeder (apparently the firemen were frightened by all the snakes, so I'm on the radar).
It'll be a slow process of several years starting back up but I hope to have a legitimate, respectable herp business eventually.
It's good to have rediscovered this community!
Long-winded Lynn