First 2007 CH shipment a few fancies....

Well, I finally got a shipment of 2007 CH balls in. They were supposed to be here Thursday but did not finally clear until late Friday night, apparently someone in good old Africa is sending false CITES docs overs and its causing some problems down in Miami. A bit delayed, but all in great health, 80% still have not shed. Thought that I'd post a few pictures of several "fancies" That came out of 100% normal shipments. These guys were in not pulled out in Africa....

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...7/P1010222.JPG

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...7/P1010227.JPG

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...7/P1010228.JPG

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...7/P1010229.JPG

I'll post more in the next few days.

PS, I also got a smokin female shatter pattern that I'll get pics up once she sheds.....

Neil Golli

Wow Neil...great finds. I especially like the first pic (is she as red/burgandy as she appears?)

Nice finds. If you decide to sell the one on the left in the 2nd pic, drop me a line.

-Tim

Pretty babies... I've been waiting to see what's come over.

So that's the problem. False CITES paperwork.

I was supposed to get my animals Friday but USFW wouldn't clear the shipment and the bags had to be opened for ID.

They still won't let them go.

SPJ

These animals came from the same shipment that the lottery balls were supposed to come from. I was down there with Mike the whole time. In a nut shell this is what happened.

The shipment was supposed to land thursday at 5:30 the plane was late and did not arrive until 7pm. British airways closes at 8pm and it takes then almost an hour to get them off the plane and over to Cargo so there was no time to have fish and wildlife inspect them.

We checked into a hotel room Thursday night and called all the lottery bag people letting them know that there was no way to ship off this shipment as we would not be getting them until Friday and could not / would not ship friday for saturday. We could not hold the bags unopened / unhydrated until monday so everyone was let know that they would get snakes off the next shipment.

There was no issue with our CITES however the quota in Ghana has been cut hard this year and they have already seen false CITES doc coming into the country. This shipment got red flagged in part because fish and wildlife knew they had all day friday to do some random checking as the snakes were already here and they could get to them first thing in the morning. They opened a bunch of bags, no big deal they normally check several almost every shipment. They called washington verified the docs and everyones licenses and finally cleared us around 6 or 7.

No way to get them to customers so they were all brought back to my house (accept 2000 or so that were sent out Delta to two large customers) I then went threw them here with several people.

It looks like there is another shipment coming in tomorrow that Mike will be heading down to pick up. He will call all lottery customers if this is a go and get them out for Tuesday or Wensday deliver depending when they clear.

The whole issue came down to the weekend and not really fish and wildlife or a screw up by Mike or anyone else. You will get unopened bags just like the ones that I opened saturday morning that contained the snakes pictured above.

Please let me know if you have any other questions and I'll do my best to answer them.

I thought F&W were singling out Mike for some reason. I knew they got delayed and he was getting his stones busted about paperwork.

I am supposed to get the lottery animals on this next shipment. I just hope they don't bust his stones again. Hopefully since all has been verified, he can get cleared right away instead of having to be out of town dealing with a beaurocratic headache.
Someone in Africa messed it up for a lot of people to try and get around the quota. Typical.
Heck, the way my luck has been going lately I bet if I wasn't involved with getting any of these animals, he would have had no problems.:D

Mike got his balls busted (pun intended) a bit but not for anything that he did or was a part of. Fish and wildlife is just trying to thier job, the problem is that they don't really know what they are doing or even looking for half the time. They are shooting in the dark often trying to fix problems that don't even exist.

Are they rules somewhere on determining "Fancy" and "Extra Fancy"? I bought my BP from a group of "Fancy" normals at the pet shop. To me, he seems to look as good or better than the ones selling for $30 more in the "Extra Fancy" group.

oh yea, I almost forgot... Beautiful snakes!