• Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    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.

  • IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!! About the Google Adsense ads being displayed

    =====================
    Posted 08/15/2025
    =====================


    Yeah, I know. They are a pain in the butt. But they pay the bills to keep my server running. Just a fact of life, I am afraid.

    Want to get rid of them? Simple. Just become a Contributor level member or above and they will be gone. -> Please click HERE."

    Is that too much for me to ask of you to keep this site running? Well, sorry about that. I too wish I could get everything for free. But alas.....

    =====================
    Addendum: 01/10/2026
    =====================


    Google Adsense ad revenue for December, 2025 was just $30 over the cost of the lease for the server running this site. So, in effect, the money providing the incentive for me to continue running this site is coming SOLELY from the paid memberships and sponsorships here. Which honestly ain't much....

Info Bad experience with Vinny Buccigrossi

lanceheads said:
A Vet can do a fecal swab inside the cloaca and get the same results. Especially with a snake that looks impacted. No "outside" fecal matter required!
Click to expand...

Not "the same results" necessarily.

Although in this case, any results that were obtained- if they then were responsible for the flagyl treatment, tend to indicate an issue that would support Kathleen's contentions.

A swab is going to be less useful than a solid matter sample. It's far more likely to produce false negatives and far more likely to miss things that would be present in the actual mass of feces (which are, as in pretty much every species, a big ball o' gut fauna). A swab is better than nothing- but really not very good.

And more to the point- I was really asking for a history of the animal's condition while it was with Kathleen. If it produced feces after arriving with her, that tends to shift the probability and timeline of the cause of the impaction away from Vinny.

It's all conjecture though. There are far too many variables involved in the digestive process and the possible causes for impaction to call it definitely either of their faults- at least without knowing what was present in the impacted mass. The idea has been introduced that it HAD to be something that happened while the snake was with Vinny because impaction takes X amount of time- and that's simply not something that can be said with any accuracy. It might have developed over the course of months. It might very well have developed over the course of days. There are too many unknowns to say either way with absolute certainty.

What can be done is to look at the evidence and form an educated guess though- which would be greatly assisted by a timeline. It arrived. Got that part. It died. Got that part. It's all the things in the middle that I'd like more information on. If it passed waste, when did it do so (I'd also like to look at the waste but that seems like a remote possibility)? Exactly when did it eat? When did it become symptomatic, how rapidly did the symptoms advance after they were noticed?

The biggest piece of missing information would be the contents of that gut. I cannot fathom why it wasn't opened and why that wasn't looked at. Even if Kathleen was unwilling to take another financial hit with the vet, if the vet wanted to be paid for a necropsy- I'd have requested the body, taken it home and taken a scalpel to it myself immediately.

I'd also like to take a closer look at the mite situation. Kathleen seems to have indicated that she had animals from multiple sources in the same quarantine area. And that she had mite treatment on hand when the snake arrived from Vinny. I'd like to know the details of her quarantine practices and I'd like to know why she already had mite treatment on hand. She might share my style of paranoia and just keep a full range of medicines and treatments on hand at all times... but that type of practice is unusual. People generally only obtain mite treatments when they have a mite issue or are dealing with such a large volume of animals that mite treatment as a preventative becomes a financially justified choice. The treatment being present before Vinny's snake therefor becomes somewhat suspect.
 
:wavey: Not coming to anybody's defense here just saying....

I always have provent a mite on hand and it gets used in everyone's enclosures as a SOP. I've never had mites in this collection, knock on lotsa wood & Thank You to everyone I've bought from.

It's just the level of paranoia I have when it comes to ensuring the health & well being of my snakes. To me, it's no different then shelling out the money for chlorhexidine instead of just using antibacterial dish soap or lysol.

I still believe, at this point, the seller has fulfilled his moral,ethic & business obligations in this transaction.

I would want to know what the impaction was made of as well, even if it meant taking it home and doing it myself.
 
I agree with Annabelle, I think that everyone with a decent sized collection that buys animals on a semi regular basis should have mite treatment handy. i haven't had mites in years, but I have two cans of black knight on the dresser in my snake room just in case.

Chris
 
It is very hard to imagine a vet who wouldn't be interested in checking what caused such a large obstruction. If I lost an animal to something like that I would want to know what the obstruction was to be sure it didn't happen again.
If I thought someone else were to blame, and expected compensation from them, I would DEFINITELY have a necropsy done. I don't think the buyer should be punished for not doing it, it just seems that knowing the cause of blockage would be central to proving fault.
 
Vinny is one of the "Good Guys"

:iagree:

I noticed Vinny listed on here and felt compelled to include my perspective since he is one of the very few "good guys" that I have had the pleasure of working with.

Vinny has made several A+ smooth purchases with me. Unlike the majority of the tire kickers and wannebes out there, everything that Vinny said he would do during the process actually happened and on time. He had all the right questions and I could tell based on months of correspondence with him that #1 he cared and #2 he is seasoned in the culture and passion of herpers.

After reading thru this post I feel that while Kathy has a right to question the situation, as we all do....that she is more of a confused neophyte with no hard evidence and her negligence is due to improper husbandry/experience.

Andy Watson
DLR
 
DAND said:
Kathy,

If by chance you have the snake in the freezer and can make the Taylor show this Saturday and are willing to bringing it I will take it thaw it out and see what was blocking the little bugger. While I am not a vet I have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express. :thumbsup:
Click to expand...

Hopefully she takes you up on that.

Prior to opening it though, both sides should establish a few points about their practices. What kind of substrate do they both use, did either of them use plastic plants or vines in a display enclosure, what were the last two or three items that they each intentionally fed?

Some blockages might be obvious. A big wad of bedding or a plastic leaf. Some might be much more subtle- for instance if you just find a mass of less than ideally digested rodent(s). If you have the patience though, you should be able to go through it, very very carefully, and piece together some clues from the scat. Intact skulls are tremendously unlikely but you can often find those front incisors from rodents mostly intact if you're willing to take the time to get to them. A count of them can give you a number of prey items.
 
Seamus Haley said:
Hopefully she takes you up on that.

Prior to opening it though, both sides should establish a few points about their practices. What kind of substrate do they both use, did either of them use plastic plants or vines in a display enclosure, what were the last two or three items that they each intentionally fed?
Click to expand...

:iagree:

Seamus Haley said:
Some blockages might be obvious. A big wad of bedding or a plastic leaf. Some might be much more subtle- for instance if you just find a mass of less than ideally digested rodent(s). If you have the patience though, you should be able to go through it, very very carefully, and piece together some clues from the scat. Intact skulls are tremendously unlikely but you can often find those front incisors from rodents mostly intact if you're willing to take the time to get to them. A count of them can give you a number of prey items.
Click to expand...

Well then I guess I better not do it at the show then. :eek: Or should I? :dgrin:
 
It is very hard to imagine a vet who wouldn't be interested in checking what caused such a large obstruction. If I lost an animal to something like that I would want to know what the obstruction was to be sure it didn't happen again.
If I thought someone else were to blame, and expected compensation from them, I would DEFINITELY have a necropsy done.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. And particularly someone like Kathy who appears to be a knowledgable, well-seasoned keeper of multiple snakes and admits she sells animals herself. After all ... if one of her customers came back 5 weeks later and wanted a refund for a fatal impaction that wasn't apparent when she sold & shipped her snake to her buyer, wouldn't she require a necropsy?
 
Back
Top