It was amazing how important those neatly folded red, pink, lime green, or blaze orange price lists were to a 13 year old reptile enthusiast that had recently moved from a southern heaven, to the extreme cold of the north where there were few scaled critters to be found. I would study those damn lists all month till the next one would arrive, learning the latin names of every specie on them. I stared in amazement when the first albino american aligators showed up on it for $175,000 or the false gavials for $50,000. I would eagerly show my parents as they pretended to care.
After a year and a half of recieving these and after saving all I could working at a taxidermy shop skinning deer through the winter I decided to make my first reptile investment. I wanted to order a variety of colored amazon tree boas and breed them for certain traits. solid reds, solid yellows etc etc... anyway, long story short...I purchased the snakes from crutchfield and I wound up opening my first box...of enydris on their death bed. a couple had ruptured eyes, all were severely emaciated, the inside of the bags had bloody fecal matter in them, a few couldn't close their mouths, a few couldn't right themselves, etc... etc...kind of like getting coal in every box for your first Christmas ever, it just makes you wanna blow santas brains out. every snake was dead within the week. Of course I called and complained but whoever took the calls had little to no time for me and said they couldn't guarantee them because the shipper of their choice didn't deliver to my area (or something along those lines).
about 6 months later I had to try again (unfortunately at that time I thought crutchfields was all there was) This time I wanted to breed red eyes, and dendrobates histrionicus (at the time they were 25$ each on the list) so I ordered like 10 red eyes and they were out of histos so I just had to spend the rest, and I wound up getting 15 or so gold mantellas. anyway that shipment showed up early the next morning, I opened the box and every frog was completely dried out, as if they spent a week in a dehydrator. I assume what had happened was some one had put dried moss in each deli cup and forgot to moisten it when they added the frogs and shipped them to me. I called, yelled, screamed, etc etc...."sorry sir we do not guarantee live arrival on amphibians" some B.S. about how it was the shippers fault and..."CLICK".
The following Fall I had collected several nice fat tiger salamanders and of course I had no one else to sell them to at that time but the one and only world famous crutchfield. we agreed on a price and I shipped him 100 sallys. I got a call a week later and was told they weren't as big or as nice as they had expected and said they would only pay half. I got half my money 3 weeks later. Now I don't mean to toot my own horn, but the tiger salamanders I sell, were, and are some of the best in the country.
All in all...If I ever see they guy today I'd probably sac-tag him and walk away with a smile on my face.
Thanks Tom, I learned alot.
