Upstate Exotics at it again......

[JungleHabitats]

I called mr powers on the phone ....

I have just got off the phone with the buyer of the animals after a 1/2 long conversation and alot of questions for him on the matter of golizards.com here is my unprofessional outcome .

Mr powers explained to me in as much detail as he could of how things transpired from the purchase until his post here this evening.I will try to convey the things we went over on the phone about this deal as best as i can im not the greatest at verbatum( sp ) so mr powers if i make a goof please dont take offense to it .

he had recieved the baby boas and ball python from go lizards and he was told that they were CB babies, he stated to me that his knowledge of terms he isnt on top of .After recieving them he said the babies he kept did eat however one of the babies he kept ( boa) seemed to be disoreintated when it came to feeding and couldnt get a "lock on the food item" and bit it but couldnt constrict it to kill it so he kille the pinky and fed it to him .as he stated he had took 3 to piedmont reptiles for a trade on a larger burm for his breeding plans. now the boas he had at his place as he stated in his post died shortly after this time . He stated to me that after the ydied he thought maybe he had done something wrong and had chaulked up to that. But when he went back to piedmont ( several miles away as he had moved ) and talke dto the owner he explained to him that the three boas had all died .and he needed to worry about the rest of his animals health because he thought it was IBD and explained to him the IBD and then mr powers then did some web surfing on it and put the info on the stargazing and gaping mouths together and determined the babies possibly had IBD and that they may have been imported from SA and not hatched from the go lizard ppl . he then i think 3 weeks later recieved a baby retic from "cough cough " boca reptiles and placed it in the cage he had used before and he had only cleaned it with bacterial soap and water not knowing the airborne nature of IBD. well he said that retic died VERY soon and he also lost a 5 ft albino boa and a 6 ft burmese that was housed in his house ( his other burms are in the garage he told me . upon getting his replacement from Sal he took it to the garage for safe keeping away from the house.( Sal i have to say you did good by replacing the retic i cant believe i said that lol ) he then said he called golizards and they only wanted to replace 2 of the 6 snakes that died and he said he just wanted some compensation for his loss and then things got ugly with the outcome and then he jsut wanted to get money back . he stated that the wife of golizards became very nastee with his wife and they were trashing and blaming sal for the dead snakes ( keep in mind Sals snake came 3 weeks later ) so the snakes from them 2 boas and a ball were dead or maybe the ball hadnet died at that point but did soon after.

I explained to him that Boas in my experience are a hearty animal ( i have never had any IBD and never want any here so im not a expert on it but from my studying it ) i told him i didnt think that the boas died from IBD but if imported morethen likely hadent been treated for parasites etc and probabaly were infested with them that could have led to the demise of them ? i also explainedthat the boas he has in his freezer would do no good in being tested as they were frozen and couldnt be tested for diseases at this point . this he didnt know so now he does for future refferences lol . i explained to him that im not aware of ANY names in this industry that would refund animals / cash after such a extended time frame.and that w/o hard proof of IBD he would have to play his hand the best way he can and just let ppl knowin the future of his experiences with go lizards and how he was treated thats why this great site exsits . so after talking with one party of this transaction and IMHO the most important as he had the animals and had them die with him i think that possibly go lizards may have had some bad descisons in the animals they let leave there hands , be it a deadly disease or untreated misrepresented imports . i think mr powers may have over stepped with the comunication of kickin some (_/_) at the kansas show but it was due to the comments he recieved on the phone . he now is aware of a safe guard to some extent to help him in future buys online and thats the BOI so my thoughts are that i cant balme golizards for not making right on the deal after such a timeline but i would have to say that they also need to do some serious looking at how they either keep snakes and the health of them or use a strict procedure with imports ifthey were inded that and treat them at their place or be upfront and tell the buyer they are imports and havent been treated for parasites and shopuld be vet checked for anything as such .


so i will have to say the topic of the thread should be changed and bocas name pulled out of it and use mr powers name in it not sal ... ( OMG there it went again )


yaaawns and thats all folks

 

[Rpowers]

HELLO,
I KNOW I SAID I WOULD ONLY POST ONCE,BUT SCINCE SOME OF YOU STILL HAVE QUESTION,I WILL BE MORE THAN GLAD TO ANSWER THEM.
TO START ALBINO BOAS DO COST A LARGE PIECE OF CHANGE.PATICULARLLY WHEN THE BUYER IS THE FATHER OF FIVE CHILDREN.I SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE UP ON QUARINTEEN PROCEDURES,BUT WHEN A MAN HAS A 100% GUARANTEE THAT THE SNAKES YOU ARE RECIEVING ARE HEALTHY I DID NOT FEEL IT WAS NEEDED.(A VALUABLE LESSON LEARNED).AFTER SPEAKING TO A MAN ON TH PHONE TONIGHT WHO CALLED ME ON THIS MATTER,I REALIZE THAT PYTHONS ARE EVEN MORE AFFECTED BY IBD THAN BOAS.I CAN ASSURE YOU THE SICKNESS DID KILL THESE ANIMALS.MY CREDIT CARD STATEMENTS PROVE THE TIME LINE.YOU SAY THE ODDS OF FIVE SNAKES OUT OF THE SAME CLUTCH HAVING THIS PROBLEM IS HIGHLY UNLIKELY,WHAT ARE THE ODDS OF SNAKES FROM TWO DIFFERENT STATES HAVING IT.MY POINT BEING,THE BOAS AND BALL PYTHON I RECIEVED FROM GO LIZARD BROUGHT THIS TO MY COLLECTION,AND THEY ARE DIRRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEATH OF MY OTHER SNAKES.I DON'T REALLY SEE HOW THIS COULD BE LOOKED AT ANY DIFFERENT.MAYBE IF ANY OF YOU WERE IN THIS SITUATION,YOU COULD BETTER SEE WHERE I'M COMING FROM.
BUT I'M IN THE RIGHT AND I KNOW IT,AND I WILL ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS I CAN TO THE BEST OF MY ABILITY.THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR RESPONSES,AD I HOPE THIS UNFOURTUNATE SITUATION DOES NOT HAPPEN TO YOU.GOOD LUCK

 

[Sasheena]

Mr. Powers, thank you very much for coming back and being willing to answer questions. I'm especially glad for the phone conversation and how it was conveyed. This allows a much broader picture. It is, above all other things, sad about the loss of the snakes. Recently I lost one of my very favorite snakes, not high dollar value, but still dear to my heart, and that is really the saddest part of this.

The best part about this entire thing is the lesson learned, and how you will not make this mistake again.

Question for Go Lizards: Were the boas captive bred or not?

 

[Sasheena]

PS. If at all possible, it is better to type in lower case as upper case is considered "Shouting" and is VERY difficult to read.

 

[Reptile Basics]

What I Saw

Well now that I am in on this, here is what I saw. Mr Powers brought three baby common redtails/columbiam/whatever to my store to work out some trading. I wasnt there but they ended up in my possesion and when I looked at them later that day they looked about like average farmed import babies. I had no idea where he got them or any history and if you just put them in front of me I would guess (based on handling a few thousand US and import baby boas over the last 15 years) they were right off of the boat from columbia. That doesen't particularly bother me, I have had some neat looking boas over the years come out of columbia but get us cb now because they can be had for about the same price and the risk is closer to zero. Set them up in my baby rack in seperate containers, usual routine, water, etc. Opened boxes to look at them/feed big pinkies about two days later and they were already going down hill fast. Runny stool in one box and very loose skin on all three. One was also having some co ordination issues. Not bad but strange. Once again, I have watched a lot of little boas crawl around I know what they look like. One ate, others did not. next day checked them again, removed/disposed of uneaten food and they were worse. First one died two days later (strange one), next, the day after that and the last was sort of alive a week or so after (one that ate for me) that but not by much.
I have seen several things go wrong with boas/snakes over the years ranging from tapeworms to coccidia to CONFIRMED BY VET SCHOOL IN RALEIGH NC cases of IBD. All 3 confirmed cases were subadult to adult boas, not babies. All 3 had very similar symptoms: Chronic colds a few times a year, somewhat stupid/un coordinated acting but not really all that bad as you would expect, wouldn't hold weight or size worth a damn, snakes dropped dead all around them from all or some of the above mentioned issues. ANY stress (moving them, changing cages, trips to the vet, etc.) made things a lot worse. Two seperate owners by the way. Back to these babies- while they werent exactly porky when i got them, they werent all that thin either. About average. If this was a parasite issue it must have been one hell of a good parasite to bring them down as fast as it did or have had an extremely good foothold already which doesent fit their appearance when they arrived. Impossible for me to say. I have seen coccidia cases in colubrids and boids that were real bad and the animals were very emaciated but they did not just drop dead in a few days, didnt lose all of their weight in a few days and as is typical of coccidia had blood traces in their stool. They really didnt give me much opportunity to find out what was wrong.
Based on all of this, I suggested to Mr Powers he may want to consider IBD as a possible cause, pray he didnt have mites or any other little buggies in his collection, sterilize everything and more carefully choose his boas, etc in the future. If it was not IBD then it was one scary parasite/bug about as bad and all of the above still applies. I also suggested quarantine in the future for this very reason. I didn't know until late in the game where they came from or anything else about them. Frankly it really doesen't matter and unfortunately could have happened to anyone selling farmed or even in some cases USCB boas. QUARANTINE YOUR NEW AQUISITIONS! I do for just this reason and have unfortunately learned the lesson the hard way a few times. Panacur and Flagyl are also easily available. We give both to about everything that goes through our hands, with a few exceptions, whether they need it or not. It won't cure everythng but it will knock down the majority of the common problems. Whole thing pretty well sucks all the way around. Thats all I got for ya.
Rich Goldzung
Reptile Basics Inc/Piedmont Reptile and Aquatic
www.reptilebasics.com

 

[Suncoast Herpetological]

I guess the next questions is for the folks at Go-Lizards.

1.) Were the animals imports or captive bred?

2. If they were captive bred, who produced them?

3.) If they were not captive bred, were they represented to be to the buyer?

All three questions are very relevant. All of the symptoms demonstrated can be attributable to heavy parasite loads as well as IBD.

 

[Suncoast Herpetological]

I have to agree with one of the previous posters though. Boca Reptiles/Upstate Exotics name definitely needs to be removed from the title of this thread. Not one shred of evidence or even reasonable supposition has been supplied to support the thread originators claim. There are plenty of threads on here that show Sal's true colors without adding a bogus one.

 

[The BoidSmith]

Please bear in mind I'm not saying the boas were not sick. Chances are that if they were sick they could have died of cryptosporidiosis (wasting is really fast) than of IBD. But again it has to be confirmed by disgnosis.

Regards.

 

[GoLizards.com]

Info on the boas.....

OK all I do have the answers that you are al looking for.

THE BOAS AND BALL WE SENT HIM WERE CAPTIVE BRED.

We got the boas from a friend of ours who breeds them. WE also breed them, but as we had told him ours have not dropped yet. We picked these out ourselves and have done lots of business with our friend...every year. They were babies and eating just fine. They were very healthy when we sent them.
The main conflict right now is that he called 6 weeks later and said that they had died... well then he wanted a full refund after we told him that we wouldnt send him 10 snakes. (We were not worried about the health of our boas so my husband (after 6 weeks) said he would send him 4 more.....
The weird thing is he called us to tell us that the snakes had died after he had bought things from other people AND 6 WEEKS LATER.
Well in the time that he stated my husband hadn't called backhe was with his aunt who has cancer and g-ma that was in the ER.... we then returned his calls and he said he wanted to re-group and talk it over with his wife. He then proceeded to call us every 30 minutes up until about 11 PM. He then put the phone done with frustration and I got on the phone and poltiely told him that we would call him back the next morning and we had to get our daughter bathed and into bed. This is when his wife got on and started threatning me and calling me every name in the book- then Sal (on 3-way) chimed in...... and called me out of my name in every way possible. (at this point I was being cussed at and yelled at by 3 people on the phone and was threatened that they would be at the show to kick our a**)(remind you we DID try to send this guy new snakes) This is when instead of returning the name-calling I hung up.
I just don't nd that if the animals were dying at 2 weeks then why weren't we called for 6????
If anyone has any questions please feel free to call us as well.
We don't buy sick animals nor do we sell them. We do not lie and are very honest good people. We are every day people like you all.... we don't want to be screwed so why would we screw others???

Sorry this was so long....
Kelli Cruse
GoLizards
913-341-7389

 

[Wilomn]

Golizards, I am having computer problems tonight so if you could post your TOS in this thread it would be helpful. In its entirety pease.

Were the boas and ball python you sent out captive bred and born or were they born in captivity from wild caught parents or were they imported as captive born babies?

The whole point of having a TOS is so that when something like this comes up you have something to fall back on. If you don't have one, or it's insufficient for your needs now, re-write it tomorrow.

If the guy who had the boas at his shop, sorry don't remember the name and it is taking MINUTES at a time for my computer to pull up pages tonight, was not worried enough to have necropsies done I don't see how he could have thought that it was IBD. If he was even suspicious it would be logical to have them checked, to have had a necropsy done, and NOT to have frozen them and SAID NOTHING about them.

Things are just not adding up here.

And no necropsy on an albino boa? Come on guys, wouldn't you want to know what had killed a snake that valuable? How many movies or trips to a theme park could a father of five have bought instead of an albino boa? Enough to want to know why it died I would think. Especially if other snakes were dropping off.

Were there NO necropsies done on ANY of the snakes that died?

 

[Reptile Basics]

necropsy?

I am going to spend how many $$ on a necropsy of someone elses $40 boa?? I froze them so I would be able to return Mr Powers property to him. He was not available to me to talk to immediately and I do not need someone elses festering diseased corpse lying around regardless of what it died from. Straight to the freezer. He is a decent distance from me from what I am told and I did not see him for a few days after he called me and I told him there was a problem. As far as necropsies on anything else of his, I have no idea and it really is not up to me nor is it any of my business. Crypto is a good suggestion, in my opinion just as bad as IBD and the result is the same, you are screwed, your INFECTED animals are going to die regardless of what you do and you better start quarantining everything else and hope for the best because either can spread very nicely. Scary stuff. Either way , they were isolated while I had them so bleach/Nolvasan the crap out of everything they came into contact with and move on. As far as CBB or not, I stated my opinion and it stands but that doesent mean I am right or wrong, just my opinion based on what was in front of me when they got to me. and once again really ultimately doesnt matter because a CBB is just as capable of getting sick, either from the start or while in someone elses care or picking something up along the way from some other animal. If in fact the timeline is about 2 months I would have to say that is a long time after the sale to come back with a problem. I would probably have to go with go lizard on that one. Sometimes you just have to eat it. I have no DIRECT knowledge of when, where or how these animals were produced, purchased, housed, shipped, or anything else before they came to me. The only people who really do are the two interested parties. I will say that on my end, Mr Powers did not even consider going through with the trade/cash deal we had worked out once he saw the boas he had brought. Good for him. We have all received one more valuable lesson as to why you really outght to quarantine all of your new animals regardless of what they are and where they came from. Mr powers will likely not do business with Go lizard any more and vice versa so this will now likely degrade into the usual 3000 post he said/she said extravaganza we all love!
Rich Goldzung
Reptile Basics Inc/Piedmont Reptile and Aquatic
www.reptilebasics.com

 

[Rpowers]

hello,
i know why my albino boa,and every other snake died.it was because of the crap that go lizard sent me.everyone talkes about things not adding up.now go lizard is saying 6 weeks(wich is the truth)not 2 months.there story is not consistant.they told me they bred those snakes at the time of purchase.there was no talk about getting them somewhere else.go lizard story hase changed so much already.it went from them offering 5 snakes,now it is 4.when the actual truth is,they only wanted to replace 2.come on jason and kelli,try to keep your lies in order.you guys sent me crap,and crap still stinks 6 weeks later.you guys talk about being honest,then why is you story changing.you ripped me off and feel good about it,but i'm not going to be ripped off,and made out to be a liar as well.i have said it before,i bought six snakes from you,all six of those died,as well as four others.the money is not a big issuse for me,as i do have a good paying job.it is the pincipal off getting ripped off of the money,that i did work so hard to earn,that really gets me.like i said,the snakes you sent out were 100%crap.thank you
Rick Powers

 

[Dennis Gulla]

This is indeed a fishy thread!

Too many stories...too many people involved. A guy has a collection of albino Boas, Ball Pythons and Burmese Pythons yet does not know basic husbandry??? He contacts Go Lizard six weeks after he purchased some baby boas from them and tells them they gave his collection IBD. If this idividual does not even know basic husbandry for his boids, how does he even know what IBD is unless someone planted that in his head?

In my opinion, Go Lizard is not responsible for anything. Again they were contacted six weeks after the sale... And the buyer admitted that the animals he purchased from Go Lizard were not separated from the other animals he purchased.

How many of you breeders would honestly compensate this guy if you were in the same situation?

 

[KCRD.com]

This is why people are so leary in this business....

OK,

My name is Jason Hormann, I own and operate www.KCRD.com, I am very good friends with Jason and Kelli Cruse, and am also business partners with Jason on a few projects.

I was on the phone with Jason the night Kelli was getting her ass chewed by the three on the phone. I know that Jason would never knowingly ship out sick snakes, nor would he misrepresent animals as CB if they were infact WC or even CH.

Unfortunatly, a person here has purchased some healthy animals and some sick animals. No one really knows which were which, but I have a pretty good idea which were the sick ones. The person who purchased the animals did the unthinkable and didn't quarantine the animals, when infact anyone who purhcases a snake as valuable as an Albino Boa should know that this is a pretty important procedure in owning snakes. I would risk several thousands of dollars if I failed to quarantine any new animals that came into my facility.

The bottom line here is that Jason was willing to replace some of the animals, since he was originally told that two of the boas died during the first week after delivery. I explanied to him that this would be that absolute max that I would do, simply because I think that any animals that are shipped out that are healthy should not die during the first week no matter what condidtions they are kept in. He agreed and then all hell broke loose on the phone. I don't blame him one bit for not wanting to help now, after what took place. As far as the threats go, grow up, or bring yourself to KC, as I'm sure Mr. Cruse would be more than happy to discuss this face to face.

Unfortuatly the snakes were not checked out by a vet before or after their deaths, and now that they have been frozen any autopsy that is done will be inaccurate.

I belive this is a live and learn lesson for someone who should have had a better husbandry practices.

In closing, ever since the the snakes have been shipped out, none of Jason and Kelli's snakes have died, and if infact one of his snakes had IBD, there would be more unfortunate deaths.