Mustangrde1 said:
1) Demonstrate no less than one year of substantial, practical experience (to consist of no less than 1000 hours) in the care, feeding, handling, and husbandry of the species
for which the permit is sought, or other species within the same biological order, which are substantially similar in size, characteristics, care and nutritional
requirements to the species for which the permit is sought.
2) Documented educational experience in zoology or other relevant biological sciences obtained at the college or technical school or above may substitute for upto six months or 500 hours of the required experience.
(3) Shall not have been convicted of a violation of venomous reptile regulations for three years prior to application for such permit.
4) Must be at least 18 years old at the time of application
Ok, #4 is perfectly reasonable. #3 is perfectly reasonable. #2 is well kinda worthless IMHO. Taking a zoology/biology course and trying to substitute that as hours towards educational experience relating to a hot species is a joke. It does not compute. I've taken such college level courses and they don't talk crap about hot snakes other than they are classified as a reptile. I am unsure what you mean by a technical school let alone how that would apply to hot snakes.
#1 sounds good at first glance, but from a practical standpoint it would not work.
You are talking about having to work with a particular hot species 3 hours per day every single day just to meet a minimum 1000 hour per year requirement.
1 year consisting of no less than 1000 hours would insinuate that you would actually prefer that people spent more than 1000 hours in that one year? So that means.... you would like to see what.... 4, 6, 8-hour days every single day working with a particular species?
Even at a minimum 1000 hours it would be impractical for anyone (with a life and a job) to meet that requirement in a single year's time unless the person happened to work a paying job in an animal industry that actually worked with hots on a daily basis and happened to include the species that person might be trying to get a permit for.
I've got a hot snake. Let us assume for the moment that I happened to move to a state where your proposed guideline was in effect and wanted to take my snake with me. This would mean that I would have to apply for a permit to be able to keep my snake. Ok cool. I have no problems with being required to hold a permit. I meet the 2, 3, & 4 requirements right out of the bag.
Now, under your proposed guideline for requirement #1 which is 1 year's experience consisting of
no less than 1000 demonstratable hours in order to be considered acceptable enough to earn that permit...
It takes me 20-30 minutes on average to clean my snake's cage once a week: remove dirty carpet and cage furnishings, wipe down cage, put clean carpet in, bleach/scrub water bowl, rinse, refill and put back in the cage, clean ceramic hide house if necessary, clean the dirty carpets and set out to dry for the following week). It takes me all of 2 minutes to drop a couple of dead mice into the cage every other week. That only comes to oh about 30 hours of practical care work related experience earned in a year's time for that snake (or in this case his species). What am I supposed to be doing with the other 970+ hours... harssing the poor snake with unnecessary handling for
at least 2.5 hours every single day? Man, I'd be screwed out of ever being able to keep my snake unless I was working with about 25-30 other snakes just like him. I have one, I like my one snake, I don't have a need for more than one let alone a couple dozen of them.
Adrian
