Dinkers: Please agree with me so I feel better!

[hungba]

Ok I am joking about you need to agree with me...

Here's what happened. A few years ago, I picked up a male and a few females from a CH shipment of ball python that were kind of odd looking and "dinker worthy". The intention was to test them out to see if there was anything genetically reproducible. At the time, and the years before it, I was so passionate about ball pythons I would wake up in the night and just sit in front of my racks in awe. All my holidays, free time etc was spent 100% with my reptiles, seeing others reptiles, building cages and racks or researching it, all that stuff. I enjoyed it and it was the only thing I enjoyed for years and years.

The past few years had not been too easy on myself and my family. I won't go into to much details as I don't want this to be a negative post, but lets just say it got to the point it made no sense for me to spend all that money on rats, vet bills etc., and having fallen into depression in an overwhelming life situation, I started resenting all the money I was spending, and, like I said earlier, basically 100% of my time for them, cleaning snake crap and feeding. It became a chore. My 12 year old tegu (he was like a son to me) dying of cancer last year after tens of thousands of dollars at the bazillion vet visits, and many sleepless nights of cancer treatments, medicines, injections etc. did not help revive my enthusiasm for reptiles either. I was no longer excited about any of my projects and even just abandoned many of them. So, those dinkers lay in the rack, just fed them, watered them etc. I stopped breeding last year altogether except for one pair, and sold off just under half of my snakes so far I think, even giving a few away for free to friends.

Yesterday, I finally got around to selling off those dinkers, and listed them for sale just as normals, because until proven otherwise, that's what they are. I got comments like "nice dinkers" which I guess showed that I had a good eye. The male IMMEDIATELY sold, at 2am in the morning (while I was still in the process of posting ads to different sites), when everyone was asleep, to a girl who wasn't a breeder or anything, just looking for a pet, for roughly USD$60 equivalent. Then THE next morning, people woke up, and like 4 or 5 people inquired about that male, but hardlyany of the others. I finally got curious and asked two of them, why are you interested in that particular snake? They both said "Because there is a good chance its a new gene!" One guy even said, "I'd gladly risk $60 for a chance to get a new gene and many millions of dollars and become famous!" I'm not joking, he actually said that!

Now, I concur that that male was one of the more different looking ones of the bunch, but come on! Firstly, I know it doesn't work like that. If I had carried on with the project, probably one of two things would have happened. 1) I end up with a billion normals I would have to find buyers for, or 2) IF it proved out, after,say two to 5 more years of work (something I have no interest in doing anymore), keeping a bazillion normal looking offspring, and then have a difficult time marketing it unless and perhaps even if it made brilliant looking combos, then I can give myself a pat on the back and that's it. Had I still got the same enthusiasm I had for these snakes I had in my younger days, I'd do it for the fun of it. But now, for what? Every :cens0r::cens0r::cens0r::cens0r: Joe and Mary has a "new morph" and nobody gives a crap. I have made new COMBOS, not new genes, and I know no one really gives a crap nowadays beyond a "Wow that's pretty cool". Moneywise Id be better off risking $2 on a lottery ticket, and famewise, the way the world is today, I'd probably get much much more (and perhaps even more money too!) by videoing myself farting in public wearing a wig and hoping it goes viral. You see? I'm not stupid, I know how this works!

But I do have Howard Hughes level OCD and when they said those things I started going in my head "What if it's a new BILLION DOLLAR MORPH!" "What if I paired to a pastel and it becomes a neon pink snake with Louis vuitton pattern!". I know it's stupid but I can't shake this! UGH!!!

Besides, it's stupid. It's just a ball python that is brighter in color than most, with a decent striped back (not even a full stripe, broken in FOUR places) and a bit of a head stamp. I've been in this game long enough to know it's worth tinkering around with but really? So special? I don't know why those guys were so gaga over it. I think maybe the camera flash made it look lighter than it actually is.

I'm not sure if posting a pic of the snake would be a good idea?Because I'm SURE it will bring out the "inner troll" in some of you all and you'll say "OH DANGGIT YOU STUPID ITS A GAZILLION DOLLAR GENE WHY YOU SOLD IT YOU DUN GOOFED!" LOL!