• Responding to email notices you receive.
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    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

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    Posted 08/15/2025
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    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
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    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....

kenneth Yates of South Carolina

No that is not Ken, that is Chad Minter, a fellow hot keeper. He disigned the ad for us. I believe there is a link somewhere in this thread to a picture of Ken holding an albino Burmese Python.

Anja Buffalo
 
This might be to little to late. but I was the recipient of 2 of the neotropical rattlers Kevin received. As far as I know all of the ones Kevin had died, the 2 I received died within a week or two. Both were very thin as if they hadn't eaten in a while(or at all since birth) If this Ken guy loves animals so much why couldn't he feed them?
 
All of those Crotalus durissus durissus were from Matt Harris in NY. There were 3.3. (1.2 yearlings and 1.2 CB 7/03 babies) All of these snakes were eating great and doing great when we were dismissed on 11/24/03. These were snakes that I had acquired for Elite for our future breeding projects. I received feeding/shed records from Matt Harris when I obtained these snakes from him at the Oct. 03 Hamburg Show. These snakes were all kept seperately as long as they were in our care and fed weekly. The day we were dismissed from Elite we saw them and they had been dumped into one sweater box container together by another employee alond with a couple of terrificus babies. These were some of the nicest durissus I had seen in a long time. I hate to hear they are all dead now. It really pi$$es me off.


GRRRRRRRRR.............


Anja Buffalo
 
I'm a bit late on this topic...

After talking to a friend of mine today about some snakes I purchased from Elite back in October and hearinfg what he had to say about Elite, I decided to look into things, mainly due to a few tiny facts concerning the snakes I purchased.

First off, I will say that when I met Anja and James at the show where I picked these snakes up in Missouri, they seemed to be anything but lazy. Fast moving, eager to help and eager to please. They certainly seemed to know what they were doing and I think a lot of places could benefit from employees like them. If half of the vendors at that show had impressed me the way they did with their attitudes and animals, I would have spent a lot more money than what I did that day.

As for my questions about those animals, I will maybe email Anja & James and ask them privately about what I need to know. Summed up, they were great to deal with, and so far I don't regret it.

Ken owes Kevin a lot. That is all there is to it. From what I have read, Ken also owes Anja & James more than he would care to admit.
 
I got the rattlers shortley after kevin got them. I went over to his place and picked them up.
 
but I was the recipient of 2 of the neotropical rattlers Kevin received. As far as I know all of the ones Kevin had died, the 2 I received died within a week or two. Both were very thin as if they hadn't eaten in a while(or at all since birth)
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Actually, I think Kevin said he only received 2 neotropical rattlers, how many did you think he had?

It's a shame that they were fat and happy on 11/24, and had deteriorated to that condition by mid December.

Too many animals paid the price for this debacle.
 
From O'Anus page 7.

I just recieved an email from Mardi and He did bag the snakes, but he DID NOT box them or ship them. He did bag six neotropicals, but only two came to me,
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From nvnm8 page 101.

This might be to little to late. but I was the recipient of 2 of the neotropical rattlers Kevin received. As far as I know all of the ones Kevin had died, the 2 I received died within a week or two.
Click to expand...

According to O'Anus, he only recieved two (2) neotropical rattlers yet your post makes it appear that O'Anus had more noetropical rattlers on hand from this shipment.

Also, will you post pics of your dead rattlers, with clear closeups of the head and mouth (open preferably) ?
 
I'm sorry but I don't make a habbit of keeping dead animals in the house. That's just personal prefrence.
 
I'm sorry but I don't make a habbit of keeping dead animals in the house. That's just personal prefrence.
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Hmmm....that doesn't quite explain the discrepancy in the amount of durrisus that were received.
Maybe Kevin could find the missing dead durrisus in that ever growing pile of venomous snake carcasses he seems to be accumulating?
 
Why does everyone think Kevin is a butcher? everyone is making him out to be a person that get a kick out of killing snakes. Kevin is a good guy, as long as I've known him I have never seen any mis treatment of animals. Sure he might do the occasional venomoid surgery but at least he good at it. Hell he trained under the best. He's not just another garage hack.
 
to be honest, I never saw any other durissus other than the ones I received. I'm only going on what I've been told. I have to say that I was VERY upset about my durissus. I really like durissus and have been looking for a pair for a long time and to have my first pair turn tits up really made me mad.
 
Okay.....

Before this turns into a conspiracy theory(again, I may add), those durissus are the ones that were sent to me. We thought they would be okay, since they ate and appeared to be doing good, but from the severe neglect that they recieved from Kenneth, they did not make it. This just goes to show that because of the neglect on Kenneth's part(dehydration,starving,poor shipping methods,ect.), these animals are still dropping dead.
Kevin Smith
PS-keep trying Chris, one of your theories has to come through some day.
 
Conspiricy?

Wow!
you stated DIRECTLY that FOUR (4) green mambas arrived quite dead, showed THREE (3) limp green mambas and later on claimed the fourth obviously dead green mamba aquired a heart beat AFTER yourself and two (2) others verified that it, the fourth (4th) green mamba was dead and quite stiff.

Your story is full of enough holes that anyone can drive Kennedys limosine through it.

You are not even 100 % positive which if any snakes arrived dead or alive, if ANY really arrived dead.
Point is, you have not shown positive proof for ALL the dead snakes you claim. Period.


In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny and a few other members here.. 'What a maroon'
 
Sure he might do the occasional venomoid surgery but at least he good at it. Hell he trained under the best. He's not just another garage hack.
Click to expand...

So it IS true, Kevin IS doing his own surgeries.
Just as many thought but Kevin is not man enough to admit to.. then again, it is also a crime for him to be doing such practices and I gueess he doesn't want a cell mate named Ben Dover.

By the way, even a good hack is still just that.. a hack.
 
W.Wedeking said:
As for Mardi, while I am happy that he saw fit to come and post here, there has been one nagging question in the back of my mind. If he didn't know either party very well, and all he did was bag up those snakes, how did he know the age of the Black Mamba and that it was CB?
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Because there are significant differences in the morphology of wild caught and cage raised animals due to the intermittent or seasonal feeding patterns as well as increased range of movement in wild animals. I would feel confident making the same determination with reasonable expectations of accuracy. This determination is best made in younger animals. An older animal maintained in captivity for a number of years may be indistinguishable from a captive raised animal by morphology alone.

The green mambas in the photo are freshly dead and have never been frozen and defrosted, or even refrigerated for any length of time. I've lost more than a few green mamba patients that have ended up in the freezer. The color changes rather dramatically. Black mambas do not undergo the same color changes so I can't really make any statement one way or another about that animal.

And no, I don't do venomoid surgery, but I have cleaned up after a few amateur hacker's bad botch jobs. :angry:
 
Because there are significant differences in the morphology of wild caught and cage raised animals due to the intermittent or seasonal feeding patterns as well as increased range of movement in wild animals. I would feel confident making the same determination with reasonable expectations of accuracy. This determination is best made in younger animals. An older animal maintained in captivity for a number of years may be indistinguishable from a captive raised animal by morphology alone.
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I think Mardi ended up saying that he knew whom Ken had purchased the mambas from, and that's how he knew their history.......but, daaaaaaaaaaang, Tanith..... outstanding information!
 
ReticEd said:
The snakes are alive in the pic.
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This is a perfectly plausible scenario given who is holding the snakes. The laboratory "open drop" technique as I describe it here: http://www.kingsnake.com/snakegetters/demo/vet/isobox.html can produce snakes that will hang limp in this manner, though it is not at all recommended that non breathing animals with poor or no muscle tone be allowed to dangle with no support. Of course is it also not recommended that snakes have their venom glands cut out by non veterinarians with no pain medication, so I hardly think that improper handling of anesthetized snakes would have been a concern.

In fairness, I *think* I may be seeing a deep skin fold in one of the green mambas that would indicate death (or at least a severely debilitated condition) rather than brief anesthesia. The picture isn't of good enough resolution to tell for certain however. I don't like venomoid butchers and I'm not particularly interested in defending them, but fair is fair and the truth is still the truth. I could give a better opinion if I had a better copy of the photo. At the moment I still have to say that anesthesia is a totally plausible scenario in this case.
 
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