I heartily dislike this back and forth jabbing at each other. Why do you folks have to do this? Do your ego's really need this boost of one upping each other on a daily basis? I do find it rather funny one of our more vocal posters was just as adament about taking the other side of the argument when it came to venomous snakes but that's a discussion for another time I suppose.
I'm glad, however, that this thread was posted if it brings into focus the responsibility to be a safe, sane and responsible snake owner when you choose to own large snakes.
We have only the one snake over 8 feet and she's certainly no giant but at over 3 feet longer than I am tall and made of pure muscle I'd be the worst kind of fool to think I could ever win out over Tequila's strength. We have rules about her. How we house her. How we handle her. Those rules were discussed, laid down and agreed to before we ever finalized her adoption from Jamie and Amy. With kids in the house, with all of us a bit complacent with handling the other much smaller snakes, Mike and I felt it was imperative to make sure we showed the kids what we think of as the right way to deal with this beautiful big snake of ours.
I'm sorry this woman died. I'm more sorry she made a horrific mistake that she was likely well aware of the consequences of but still chose to take that snake out and try to handle and medicate it alone. Her family's loss is great. The damage this sort of story does to us all in the greater herping community is pretty awful. All in all a very horrible thing that could have and should have been avoidable.
Can we simply focus on good snake keeping habits when it comes to larger snakes and leave the amateur CSIing and the insults out? I'd rather we learned from this tragedy, wouldn't you?
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