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40 Dead Snakes Found In Greensboro Home, Man Charged

INSANE CANES

INSANE CANES

Gun and snake traders.
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Fox 8 Video



GREENSBORO, N.C. (WGHP) — A man has been charged with leaving behind more than 40 dead snakes after moving out of a rental home.

Chris Walton was charged with multiple counts of cruelty to an animal after snakes and dead rats were found in a rental home on Larson Street.

The animals were all found in plastic crates, decomposed to the point there were only bones, said Tiffany Rahenkamp, Walton's former landlord. The rats were believed to be used as food for the snakes, Rahenkamp said.

"I don't care if it's a dog, a human, a snake or a spider. It's a living thing, you don't have to treat it like this," Rahenkamp said.

Animal control is trying to determine the how the animals died. Rahenkamp said she believes the animals either froze to death or starved. Animal control is also trying to determine the type of snakes found.

"They were no garden snakes. They were much bigger than that," Rahenkamp said.

Walton had just moved out of the home on Thursday and left many other things behind, including TVs, clothing and even food. Rahenkamp said there was also a strong stench when she first walked in.

"It was honestly one of those things where we walked in and walked right back out. It was like a full-time job getting the stuff out of the house," Rahenkamp said.

Walton had rented there for years, Rahenkamp said. Walton was called at work Tuesday but declined a request for comment
 
Someone should put that moron in a locked plastic tub and not feed or water him. Im sorry, but some people have no right to breath the same air the rest of us do. What total scumbag.....
 
This is absolutely sickening. After clicking on the link and watching the news... looks like they were mostly high end ball pythons :( There were eggs in there and everything. Also it says that he left Thursday, how long were they dead and decaying before anyone noticed the smell??? Just awful :(
 
wow that is so sad for those snakes. I wonder if he had a virus wipe them out? From the one picture, they didn't look totally skinny and starved and it mentioned he had rats. Just seems odd that so many would die like that. Course low temps would have done it as well. What a shame
 
Why should he be charged with animal cruelty? It appears [if the video comments check out] that he lost electricity in December and that's what killed the snakes. If that's true, it was merely accidental and not "cruelty." In the case that they were accidentally frozen, that's actually a fairly humane way to die for an ectotherm. I'd be inclined to believe, since he had morphs and was breeding, that this would be true. They were obviously of value and he obviously knew the trade to an extent at which he could get them off his hands if he so pleased. It's unlikely he's just some moron with a "couple of PY-tons." Either way, there's not enough evidence to conclude that he mistreated or intentionally harmed these animals.

I think the true villain in this story is the :censored: they interviewed. "We definately learned a lesson, next time we're going to be more strict, more unexpected visits. Um, more penalties and stuff like that because apparently people take advantage <sound cuts off>" As someone who until recently, has been raised in rental after rental and has always respected the properties, I'm disgusted when people who sell [or in this case, rent] their product out to consumers turn around and treat them like second rate citizens. Some are just downright unpleasant elitists.
 
There is nothing "humane" about letting 40 snakes freeze to death (or even one snake). If this guy did nothing wrong, he should have at least removed their bodies.... plus, if something horrible happened and I lost power for more than a short while, I would actually go out of my way to get my reptiles either to a friend's or rehomed them. Simply letting them die (however "humane" the method of death) would not even be close to an option for me... :-(
 
To say that having THAT many snakes die because of neglect is not cruelty is ridiculous. I don't care what happens to your electricity you can't simply leave them to die! That's like saying that I let my dog die, I just didn't have the money to keep feeding it so I didn't. He obviously bought them from somewhere. Take them back, put an add in the paper/craigslist/online/the telephone pole outside walmart, something!

Also, freezing is NOT really all that of a great way to euthanize. Think about what it would be like to have individual cells of your body burst as the water in them slowly froze. The periphery of the body would freeze before the snake/reptile actually dies. If you have no other options to euthanize a reptile, you can use the cool down in the fridge and then transfer to the freezer method, but even then I would have questions regarding the pain it caused the animal.
 
You all are not listening to what I'm saying before jumping on the "GET HIM AND <insert consequence>!" bandwagon.

A comment on the news story originally posted claimed - "i knopw the guy personally. he is a good guy and was a breeder of high end ball pythons. his electrical service was terminated by a roommate that moved out and his snakes died due to lack of heat in december. just telling you what happened."

If this is true, it appears their deaths were due to an unexpected loss of power, rather than intentional animal cruelty. I wouldn't be so quick to assume their deaths were intentional. How many people here own snakes but not a backup source of electricity? If you were away during a cold winter day and you unknowingly lost power killing your snakes, should you be accused of animal cruelty? I'm not trying to say this quote is 100% accurate, it's merely a possibility. Unless you know what killed those snakes, don't pass judgement just yet...

A guy who appears to have owned thousands in morphs and had successfully bred snakes probably wouldn't have just purposely killed them rather than attempting to sell him. Obviously he knew the industry well enough that if he'd wanted to sell them, he would have. It just doesn't make sense that he would purposely kill them.

However, I will say that his lack of properly disposing of them was questionable. But that's a different matter entirely.
 
scaledverts said:
Also, freezing is NOT really all that of a great way to euthanize. Think about what it would be like to have individual cells of your body burst as the water in them slowly froze. The periphery of the body would freeze before the snake/reptile actually dies. If you have no other options to euthanize a reptile, you can use the cool down in the fridge and then transfer to the freezer method, but even then I would have questions regarding the pain it caused the animal.
Click to expand...

I have yet to see any information validating that idea. Even if that's true, that isn't really the point anyway. The point is, we don't know how the snakes died. Assuming the comment was true [which I suppose we probably won't ever know] then the snake's deaths were accidental anyway, so it really isn't here nor there.
 
I've lost power before, even for a whole weekend... not one of my reptiles died, they slowed down a bit, but were thriving the moment their lamps kicked back on. Also, the whole roommate story sounds like grade A balogna to me. I'm sorry, but if I had thousands of dollars worth of snake (oh how I wish!) There would be an absolute zero chance of me leaving the responsibility of keeping the power on to my flaky roomie....
How quickly do you think loss of power could kill 40 snakes? Sure, the weaker ones could've last too long... kinda leads me to question this man's abilities before the "outage". I might have read wrong, b
 
Not sure what happened, but here's the rest of my post:
I might have read wrong, but my understanding was that he had just moved out less than a week before the landlord inspected (finding many dead snakes in different ranges of decomp, including some that were only bones)... if I'm correct in reading that, his whole "my roommate turned off the electricity and all my precious snakes died" story is in the toilet....
 
Not sure what happened, but here's the rest of my post:
I might have read wrong, but my understanding was that he had just moved out less than a week before the landlord inspected (finding many dead snakes in different ranges of decomp, including some that were only bones)... if I'm correct in reading that, his whole "my roommate turned off the electricity and all my precious snakes died" story is in the toilet....
 
AcidRainbow said:
Why should he be charged with animal cruelty? It appears [if the video comments check out] that he lost electricity in December and that's what killed the snakes. If that's true, it was merely accidental and not "cruelty." In the case that they were accidentally frozen, that's actually a fairly humane way to die for an ectotherm. I'd be inclined to believe, since he had morphs and was breeding, that this would be true. They were obviously of value and he obviously knew the trade to an extent at which he could get them off his hands if he so pleased. It's unlikely he's just some moron with a "couple of PY-tons." Either way, there's not enough evidence to conclude that he mistreated or intentionally harmed these animals.

I think the true villain in this story is the :censored: they interviewed. "We definately learned a lesson, next time we're going to be more strict, more unexpected visits. Um, more penalties and stuff like that because apparently people take advantage <sound cuts off>" As someone who until recently, has been raised in rental after rental and has always respected the properties, I'm disgusted when people who sell [or in this case, rent] their product out to consumers turn around and treat them like second rate citizens. Some are just downright unpleasant elitists.
Click to expand...

Why leave them dead for someone else to clean up? That's disrespectful to the animal and the landlord.

Just because someone spends a few hundred dollars on some ball pythons doesn't mean they can't still be "just some moron with a "couple of PY-tons."". If all your snakes die for some unknown reason you don't just walk away and leave it for someone else to clean up. Dispose of the bodies properly and try to figure out why they died and go from there.

If they died from freezing my first thought is... well that guy is still alive, shouldn't he be dead too? Obviously he thought enough of himself to stay warm and alive, would have been nice if he would have thought about extending that privilege to the snakes too.

I know for a fact he's not the first person to lose his whole collection. He could have handled it like a man (or lady) and respected the animal, landlord, and the hobby as whole and did the right thing. Instead he walked away and left it for someone else.
 
Wow I'm having posting issues here.. lol
Seriously? An accident? Oh, oopsies, I just "accidentally" killed 40 animals by not properly caring for them.... silly me... whatever, if ypu have animals in your care its YOUR responsibility to properly care for them. Just "letting" them die is not an option (legally or morally). Oh and I guess no one has proved how painful it would be for a snake to freeze to death... feel free to test that theory.. me, I'll keep mine warm and toasty. (or rehome them the instant I realize my caring for them is substandard)
 
AcidRainbow said:
I have yet to see any information validating that idea. Even if that's true, that isn't really the point anyway. The point is, we don't know how the snakes died. Assuming the comment was true [which I suppose we probably won't ever know] then the snake's deaths were accidental anyway, so it really isn't here nor there.
Click to expand...

Clearly you have never had or come close to having frostbite.

Look at these:

http://www.avma.org/issues/animal_welfare/euthanasia.pdf

http://www.iacuc.pitt.edu/sop/Euth-AmphibiansFishReptiles.pdf

Mader, D.R. (1996). Euthanasia and necropsy. In: D.R. Mader (Editor), Reptile Medicine and Surgery, W.B. Saunders Company: Philadelphia, p. 277-281.

These are just a few of the sources of information I found in about 10 mins of searching!

Somehow, freezing as an acceptable method of euthanasia has persisted even though it is NOT humane. Probably because people hold on to the idea that "no one has shown me evidence it isn't humane."
 
But anyway, the point isn't the proper method of reptile euthanasia (I would be happy to discuss this in a separate thread elsewhere).

The point is that it never should have come to that anyway! This guy is an irresponsible animal keeper that clearly had no business owning that many animals in the first place.
 
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