Quote Originally Posted by Skiploder View Post
I'll go ahead and drop my knife and hold out my hand to Travis or anyone else I've snapped at in this thread. IBD is deadly serious to me. I had to euthanize long term animals I cared about and had to sacrifice more for testing. I spent a long stretch of time in constant dread of walking into the snake house and more importantly, my faith in this community plummeted. I saw people who were more concerned that by me sharing my experiences, that it would hurt their bottom line. When I heard from the IBD researchers that the boa community was literally not supporting their research, I decided that I was done with boids and the subset of hypocritical jackasses who seemed to be their voice at the time.
Skip,

Seems I went off half-cocked.

I accept your hand and I hold out mine in return. Forgive and forget?

You say you were being obviously sarcastic, and with the further background you provided I believe that. When your post was called to my attention however I did not read sarcasm. What I read was the snark and condescension that I hear from people who have taken a hard-core stance against something and evidence be damned (kind of the way you say elements of the boa community have done.) Blame it on the lack of context in the typed words on a forum, that is what I saw. And that rankled me, tow-fold; I have not had the misfortune of IBD but I had a buddy that lost a huge number of animals to it and, as a scientist myself, I get a bit defensive when people slam scientist under the guise of "science is evil and scientists lie just to promote their own lies." Your post came off to me as a disrespect for people like my friend and a disrespect of my cohorts. In your initial reply to my post you called me a "humorless twit". You are half-right, I take IBD as deadly serious as you. But, where as you respond with sarcasm and humor, I take a wholly humorless stance. I did not see your post as a "joke" so I did not reply as if it was a "joke". As for the "twit" half... I have been called worse in my days, and will probably be called worse in the future.

Again, my apologies for coming down like a tonne of bricks.