Bought a new ball python, he came with a contract agreement, need advice.

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Originally Posted by T_Sauer

That's on them .... I would politely tell them to "go fly a kite" they dropped the "ball" so to speak. Technically if you signed the paper they provided you and you now have possession of the snake, and the paper work calls it a different species ..... I would think that it is almost as if it never happened because the paperwork is talking about whatever species they put on the paper and the snake in question in a ball python .... therefore .. possession is 9/10 of the law

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Exactly. I was thinking about this too, and while I'm no lawyer, I wouldn't be surprised if a judge were to throw the whole thing out, saying there is actually No agreement. (In which case you wouldn't be held to anything.) This even assumes that they would bother with any legal proceedings on what, a $100, maybe $200 purchase? As unhinged as the staff may be, the organization's own lawyers would tell them it was a waste of time.

Bottom line is, they accepted your money, and handed you a snake.
Done deal.

IANA lawyer but after running a business I do have some insight into buy/sell transactions.

First, in any transaction involving a contract presented by the seller or service provider, that party is considered to be the "expert". Ambiguities or deficiencies in the contract will favor the buyer. It is not the buyer's fault that the seller didn't do their due diligence at the time of the transaction and get every bit of paper signed.

Second, at this point the deal is done, OP can tell the seller to pound sand, he doesn't have to sign anything.

Third, yes animal rescues usually have "No Breeding" contracts. With cats and dogs that's easy to enforce by spaying or neutering the animal. Reptiles, not so much, surgery is risky and expensive.

Fourth, any reptile rescue that adopts out a super pastel hypo male should expect that it will be bred eventually.

They would never know if you did breed him. I am pretty sure there is no DNA test the humane society offers on snake babies. either sign the form to shut them up then do as you please or ignore the call and block the number on your phone. Either way they cant do anything.

I also agree with what everyone has said about the agreement, they made the error and they can't control what you do with your property. Then, on an additional note, unless they have a DNA test on the snake you rescued and are going buy all of the offspring you produce over the next 10-15 years to test the babies DNA, then you have nothing to worry about :rolleyes:

I doubt they could even look at a hatchling and identify what morphs are at play, so they will never know which hatchlings are of his line

kudos on the snake BTW, a pic would be appreciated of the handsome man


-Kibbleswhites, you posted my thoughts even as I typed them

Tell them to forget about it. They dropped the ball on this one. What are they going to do if you don't sign it? Repo the snake? You paid for it already. What are they worried about? Stray ball pythons flooding the shelters? Were not talking about a cat or dog here.

I must admit I am quite surprised by the support from you all thank you. I will be posting pictures of all my snakes in a post soon enough

I must say this experience has really changed my opinion on my local humane society. They make the whole community sound like they are nothing more than a glorified puppy mill style operation when it comes to breeding these animals. Its a 12 month process that takes effort and care in order to properly raise them to be able to breed. It takes careful planning and resources to ensure the eggs will be in the proper environment to hatch. It takes proper techniques to raise the offspring so they will eat, gain weight, shed and be ready for homes. Dogs cats are far more self sufficient. Lets not forget that some times food can be an issue as well (I am raising my own ASF's as well.)

And if it was not for people who genuinely loved and cared for the animals you would have nothing but wild caught, hard to handle, ill tempered, possibly infested with god knows what snakes straight from Africa.

Speaking of pictures I need to invest in a decent camera.

good plan, if they wanna throw up a legal fuss you can probably brush it off seeing as possession of the animal will tilt the outcome in your favor. you should have nothing to worry about other than fussy activists contacting you if the society takes a medial route.

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Originally Posted by Rstrui

good plan, if they wanna throw up a legal fuss you can probably brush it off seeing as possession of the animal will tilt the outcome in your favor. you should have nothing to worry about other than fussy activists contacting you if the society takes a medial route.

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I like this thought lol ... in this instance you could make the activists eat their own soup if they tried to request anything medical wise because that kinda testing is greatly stressful to the animal LOL

I agree that you can probably do what you want later breeding-wise and no one will bother you.

But I think it's worth pointing out that the humane society's policy of asking people not to breed the animals they rescue isn't just because they are worried about the snake equivalent of puppy mills. It's because there are also many animals out there that get neglected or "sold downriver" multiple times and are in need of good homes; they don't want people adding to the numbers just because they think it's cute to have babies. That argument doesn't really have anything to do with how good of a breeder you are, or even how carefully you vet the homes that your babies go to; they can always argue that the good home your baby went to might have taken in some poor needy animal instead if they hadn't just acquired your baby.
I don't know about the "fungibility" of snakes and whether that last part is true or not, but a quick Craigslist search in my area always reveals any number of ball pythons people are selling or "rehoming"; most of them quite young, so clearly someone got an animal that could live decades, and then lost interest in less than a year or two. This forum alone is full of examples of people who got a pet snake without knowing some incredibly basic things about them - like the fact that they produce urates, for example, or that their eyes get cloudy when they shed... and at least the people who show up on the forum are trying to find out.
It always strikes me as sort of unsettling that you can buy an animal with such a long lifespan, so quickly and easily and for so cheap. But part of the reason the humane society doesn't want you to breed is to limit the overall oversupply, in hopes of reducing the number of animals that are treated as throwaway accessories, and then need rescuing.

The vagaries of the BP market means that babies coming from a super pastel orange ghost would likely be more valuable and desirable than average, and thus more likely to be cared for appropriately, doesn't really change that picture by very much.

I'm not at all saying you shouldn't breed the snake if you want to, and didn't actually promise not to. I just think the no-breeding policy is not entirely unreasonable. It's not overboard like my colleague/friend the militant PETA type, whom I finally blocked on FB so I could post about my snake without starting issues.

This is probably the most ridiculous thread I've seen on here on a long time.

OP, you're trying to see if you can get away with breeding the snake from the humane society even though it's clearly prohibited by them? Why did you get it in the first place then? Do you realize that the reason they have the rules they have is to protect the animal's interest?

Go buy a healthy snake and breed him or her. Don't try to get away with something on a technicality. Ridiculous... People are so obsessed with breeding that they forget to think about the health of the animal. I also can't believe that the people on this thread are supporting this behavior. You should know better...

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