• Posted 12/19/2024.
    =====================

    I am still waiting on my developer to finish up on the Classifieds Control Panel so I can use it to encourage members into becoming paying members. Google Adsense has become a real burden on the viewing of this site, but honestly it is the ONLY source of income now that keeps it afloat. I tried offering disabling the ads being viewed by paying members, but apparently that is not enough incentive. Quite frankly, Google Adsense has dropped down to where it barely brings in enough daily to match even a single paid member per day. But it still gets the bills paid. But at what cost?

    So even without the classifieds control panel being complete, I believe I am going to have to disable those Google ads completely and likely disable some options here that have been free since going to the new platform. Like classified ad bumping, member name changes, and anything else I can use to encourage this site to be supported by the members instead of the Google Adsense ads.

    But there is risk involved. I will not pay out of pocket for very long during this last ditch experimental effort. If I find that the membership does not want to support this site with memberships, then I cannot support your being able to post your classified ads here for free. No, I am not intending to start charging for your posting ads here. I will just shut the site down and that will be it. I will be done with FaunaClassifieds. I certainly don't need this, and can live the rest of my life just fine without it. If I see that no one else really wants it to survive neither, then so be it. It goes away and you all can just go elsewhere to advertise your animals and merchandise.

    Not sure when this will take place, and I don't intend to give any further warning concerning the disabling of the Google Adsense. Just as there probably won't be any warning if I decide to close down this site. You will just come here and there will be some sort of message that the site is gone, and you have a nice day.

    I have been trying to make a go of this site for a very long time. And quite frankly, I am just tired of trying. I had hoped that enough people would be willing to help me help you all have a free outlet to offer your stuff for sale. But every year I see less and less people coming to this site, much less supporting it financially. That is fine. I tried. I retired the SerpenCo business about 14 years ago, so retiring out of this business completely is not that big if a step for me, nor will it be especially painful to do. When I was in Thailand, I did not check in here for three weeks. I didn't miss it even a little bit. So if you all want it to remain, it will be in your hands. I really don't care either way.

    =====================
    Some people have indicated that finding the method to contribute is rather difficult. And I have to admit, that it is not all that obvious. So to help, here is a thread to help as a quide. How to become a contributing member of FaunaClassifieds.

    And for the record, I will be shutting down the Google Adsense ads on January 1, 2025.
  • 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.

Huge Rats

RoadHouse of Retics

RoadHouse of Retics

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Anybody seen the news and those 3lbs rats running around the bronx?? My question is where can I get a couple of those.lol
 
Yeah, it'd be pretty freaky to think you had an infestation of those buggers. I just can't imagine seeing them running around like that. :ack2: In all honesty, I'd probably think it was some sort of opossum...

It wasn't some super rat like some were saying though, it was just some sort of pouched species from Africa. I think they said it was a Gambian pouched rat. People commonly keep those as exotic pets, I even remember seeing a whole forum just on pouched rats once and I actually thought they were pretty neat. :p Supposedly those found in New York were released or escaped from the trade.
I think that if they were as common as regular rats then they'd have made great feeders for larger snakes, I hear they even breed more often. ;) But after a monkeypox outbreak a few years back, I'm pretty sure they're now illegal without a permit. Bummer there.

FUNFACT ~ I once saw a show where they trained pouched rats to sniff out explosives and tuberculosis. They're called HeroRATS and I hear they're actually pretty good at what they do. :D http://www.apopo.org/home.php They say it takes 9 months and almost $8k to train a HeroRAT though. :eek:
 
Many moons ago I worked at a car dealership in downtown Baltimore that had a very old building next door that a lot of the older parts inventory was stored at. I don't know how much the rats weighed that I saw over there, but they were VERY large. Yes, pretty darn close to the size of an opposum.

I wasn't all that keen about going over to that place, let me tell you....
 
I couldnt imagine the bite of those suckers. Imagine a rat or rats of that size running towards you. Id be sprinting up the nearest telephone pole.
 
Up a telephone pole? Funny, that's where I always see rats over here - up in the wires, walking across the lines.
No escape from them it seems. :reddevil: LOL

We get a lot of wild rats in our producing trees, they'll decimate them. They don't even limit themselves to eating a whole fruit or two, they have to nibble a bit on every single one of them! You can't really give them in gift baskets to people then saying "Just eat around the rat bites". :no01: They're pretty smart too, after about a week of successful kills they'll start avoiding the traps...
The encounter I remember most was actually on a rocky beach in LA. It was nighttime, we had just come back from a trip at sea and I went poking around for crabs on the shore to amuse myself before we went home. I tilted up this huge rock and 5-7 huge, black rats just swarmed out from underneath! I swear one went over my foot! :bawling:

I normally pride myself on having a good "creepy" tolerance, but I just lost it then. I had no idea our beaches had rats and of all the critters I expected to see, that was not one of them.
I guess there really is nowhere safe from those varmints. :ack2:
 
lol...i used to wait for trains underground in NYC...man...the rat sizes i used to see. And they also had attitude on them. They look at you and i swear they were flicking you off.
 
My grandfather worked in the train yards and refrigeration, so he would unload food basically off of the trains. In these train yards, they would throw older or rotten food in heaps. These heaps would attract and create these GIANT rats and dogs. He said they were vicious as hell too. They rivaled large feline in size. I have seen some pics that he took and they were incredibly massive. Words cannot describe. The packs of dogs were really mean too. Nearly EVERYONE carried a gun.
 
I was waiting for the bus at night in L.A. because my car was in the shop and as Im standing there, I saw something coming at me from the corner of my eye...I thought it was a cat or a small dog but when i turned it was a huge rat that was about 2 feet nose to tail and it just ran down into the sewer drain...didnt know they could get that big. Even now it takes me a long time to get my rats to get large let alone xxls hehe...never took the bus at night again
 
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