Thank you Mr. Hamper!!

Okay... so I recieved Ick today at ten thirty AM. CT. He was packed in a bag, surrounded by heat packs in a box (very professional). I was sure that my snake was dead just from all of the horror stories I have heard/read. He was balled tightly around a paper towel in the bag.

I moved him to the tank anyway (still convinced he was dead) and he flicked his tounge quite a bit (smelling me I'm sure). HE WAS ALIVE!! I rejoiced privately for a moment, double checked my temps and humidity and he remains where I left him tightly balled.

Now, my girlfriend of two years (Jill) has come in town(Nashville) from Chicago (home) to witness this very event. I was proud to recieve a snake on the ironic holiday of St. Patricks Day (The saint who chased all of the snakes out of Ireland.)

Not only did i see the tounge flick but after leaving him in the cage on the warm side for a bit i witness TWO yawns.. well at first I thought it was a sign of an RI so flipped a little bit and closely inspected mouth and nostrils.. no discharge and no open mouth breathing after that so I'm pretty sure it was just a yawn. He is currently inspecting the front wall of his aquarium and seems to be warming up/settling in.

Oh yeah and when I flipped out a little thinking he was dead I called Mr. Hamper whose wife re assured me and gave me some advice (all of which i had previously read here) Very nice lady, very nice man and very professional job!

Okay last paragraph... Ick has GREAT coloring and beautiful scales (no signs of any bad sheds at all) his pattern is fantastic if I can get my good for nothing friend to loan me his digi cam I can post tonight or tomorrow. Happy st. Pats!

Don is a great guy with some amazing animals. I bought a baby ATB from him in Indy a few months back and its doing great. Hes one of the best people in the hobby, no doubt about it!

This is so great, Jonah! What fun for you!! (And first-time snake parents are SO cute! LOL...been there, done that myself!)

That's a cool observation about St. Patty's day...I wouldn't have even thought of it!

Good luck getting the little guy all settled in. You know we're all clamoring for pics!! :D

Ya'll should put a link to his site on the Inquirey board. :)

Awesome. Congrats

I agree with Judy, cool thought on the St. Pat's day connection. It should make it easy to remember how long you've had him, too. And congratulations! You know we're all excited for you. :)

If Saint Patrick had taken the time to get to know a Ball Python, he wouldn't have chased all the snakes out of Ireland.

What history fails to remember is that after the death of Saint Patrick, it was only a few years until the Great Rat Plague of Ireland, since there were no longer any snakes to control the rodent population, and after so many years, the rats simply bred so freely that they were suddenly everywhere.

oughta be there

http://pythons.com/hamper

I hooked up with it through our links section. He is a super dude with a very long history of working with boids, and all of his BP's even (hell especially) the normals have fantastic colring, patterns and consistently are well cared for and in excellent health. Glad to hear he made yet another forum member a proud "parent"!

Yay! I can't wait to see pics of him.

Good sounding story but it turns out there where never any snakes in Ireland.

Yay for you! I'm really happy you got him/her alive, for I too, have heard horror stories of people receiving dead snakes. As far as the yawning part goes, he/she is realigning the jaw(thats what experts have told me). Congrats once again :D

Hey guys. Does anyone know if Don Hamper's Ball Pythons are c.b.b. or just c.h.? I emailed him about it, and he hasn't gotten back to me yet. Thanks a bunch.

Becky

Congrats!!

He breeds and raises em all - so full time, he told me, that he doesnt even have time to really spend getting to know his pc: "I spend all my time taking care of the animals" He told me his wife will prit out emails from time to time and bring them to him and then do the correspondence. I ran into the same "incommunicado" at first until I called him. Call him instead - really friendly guy, credible source of info and great snakes - the only time you might not reach him is when he is doing one of the shows.

Yeah he has a lot of trouble with E-mail he has a bad spam filter that blocks more than it should. I tried to do business over e mail but ended up calling... much easier. He is a really nice talkative guy with a good sense of humor and insanely competitive prices for the quality it seems pretty unbeatable... but I guess I'll know more with the first feed.

Oh yeah I had to run out and get a rhetostat for my light (I have an undertank pad and light) because it was getting high nineties on the hot but after i got the rhetostat (i think that's what it's called) I'm chillin' with about 93 hot and like 78.9 cool. Humidity sticks right around 51% thanks to the contact paper (shot out to whoever came up with that idea). Pics very possibly late tonight (like midnight CT)... ooh ooh and he is wicked awesome color wise it's like a yellowish green with a chocolate/black lines that fade to a whitish at the spine.. it almost looks pastel but not quite.... GORGEOUS - seriously Don Hamper -great guy.. his wife talked to me again and just told me to call if there were any problems... i explained i was new and just lost my head for a while haha - them's good people. (as are all of you - hugs to everyone.)

Very cool, Jonah. Glad you're getting everything tweaked just right and that you're happy with your little guy.

Thanks alot :) I'm just trying to find a very reputable breeder, because I don't want to regret it later on. There's a guy here in Waco who owns this small pet shop not even a mile from me, but his bp babies are always too many to a too small of tank. It's quite sad. There is even this small skink which I don't think is being fed properly. Its front legs are always scrunched up under its body. Also, where its pelvis is, it is very sunken in, and its tail has multiple kinks/breaks in it. It's a wonder the poor little guy is still alive. I keep wondering if the pet store owner even realizes it. Sorry so long, I just had to vent.

Becky

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SatanicIntention

Thanks alot :) I'm just trying to find a very reputable breeder, because I don't want to regret it later on. There's a guy here in Waco who owns this small pet shop not even a mile from me, but his bp babies are always too many to a too small of tank. It's quite sad. There is even this small skink which I don't think is being fed properly. Its front legs are always scrunched up under its body. Also, where its pelvis is, it is very sunken in, and its tail has multiple kinks/breaks in it. It's a wonder the poor little guy is still alive. I keep wondering if the pet store owner even realizes it. Sorry so long, I just had to vent.

Becky

---

Are you sure you posted this in the right thread :? :lol:

SatanicIntention, Becky, can you tell me who gave you permission to use a picture of MY snake please? Eric Davies

I'm sorry, I didn't know. I just thought she was gorgeous and didn't have anything else to use. I can find something else if you would like me to take it off of here.

Apologies,
Becky

No, Becky, that is OK. She is a HE by the way! Eric

Oh ok. Thank you for letting me use the picture. Hope I didn't offend the snake ;)

A crash course in copyrights:

Just FYI, the creator of any creative work not derived from the work of others or done as "work for hire" (such as by a graphic designer for a book publisher) automatically owns the copyright from the moment the work is "published" or made tangible in any form.

In other words, if you write your friend a letter, you own the copyright from the time it is put on paper. If you take a photo, you own the copyright from the time the negative is fixed (though there are limitations to whom and what it is permissable to photograph and publish without permission, and copyright on photos of the works of others such as sculptures is slightly more complicated). If, however, you take someone else's work and modify it, you do not own the copyright to the resulting work (there are exceptions, such as a copyright on a short-story anthology in which it is the editing, arrangement, etc. for which the resultant copyright is held), which means if you take someone else's photo and add several Photoshop effects, the copyright is still held by the owner of the copyright of the original picture and not by you.

The short version of this is that any time you would like to quote someone's work extensively (not excerpt for review, for example) or publish someone else's work (such as including a breeder's photo of an animal you purchased in a forum post), you are legally obligated to get the permission of the copyright owner before using it in such a way. If you do not seek and receive permission for its use, you can be sued for damages and copyright infringement, regardless of whether you made a profit from using the material.

Marla, do you work at a law firm, too? I'm impressed.

original fixed and tangible original fixed and tangible - that's copyrightable haha :) I'm in college for music business and communications so i've had some copyright law as well.

Smynx, no, but I have had someone try to rip off my work, which motivated me to learn. ;) They actually had the guts to reproduce it, put their own copyright notice on it, and try to make a profit off it. It still ticks me off to this day, and that was almost 9 years ago now.

what'd they steal? video, paper, general herp info? don't have to answer just curious because someone tried that too with a couple of songs I wrote... thankfully I had copyrighted them in 2000

Wow, Marla, that really sucks. That's not the way you want to go about learning the law.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Marla

Smynx, no, but I have had someone try to rip off my work, which motivated me to learn. ;) They actually had the guts to reproduce it, put their own copyright notice on it, and try to make a profit off it. It still ticks me off to this day, and that was almost 9 years ago now.

---

You learn a thousand lessons when you get ripped off :)

Actually, it was a graphic design I did for a web site I had and related group/organization I was trying to start. I took the design to a friend with a printing business to have t-shirts made, and she and her partner changed the colors slightly and put their own copyright notice at the bottom and sold the shirts at a public event, with my text and logo design otherwise unchanged. What's worse is that, as a professional graphic designer, she knew better and I knew that. The worst thing about it is that it ruined a good friendship. Grrrr.

With friends like that... :roll:

Yeah, purty much. :(