I am about as pro-gun as any person can be so I consider it appalling that people in the UK have been stripped of their right to protect their life and property.  Criminals don’t abide by laws so the gun-carrying thief breaking into somebody’s home in the UK must feel pretty confident about his chances; he knows that the odds are in his favor that any opposition he encounters is going to be unarmed.  If a UK citizen owned a gun in defiance of the law and used it against the thief he would be in as much (or more) trouble as the robber.  In the UK, they would both be considered criminals.  I find this to be very, very sad:  defend your family and your property and become a criminal for doing so.  Rest assured that if that same guy broke into my house here in Virginia he would have a six-pack of Coke can sized exit wounds in his back.

But how did guns become illegal in the UK?  Was it done in one fell swoop?  Nope.  It was done in stages, a tactic often used to disarm (literally in this case) the opposing voices.  Despite my pro-gun position I didn’t sit down to write about gun control.  I continue to be concerned with the fate of reptile ownership in the United States.  But the history of gun control in the UK serves as a excellent timeline that illustrates our likely fate unless we get our act together in very short order.  Here’s how things went down in the UK:

• 1988 -  In the wake of the “Hungerford Massacre” the Firearms (Amendment) Act of 1988 was passed.  This law made it illegal to own semi-automatic rifles, pump-action rifles and military weapons that shoot explosives.  The law also implemented registration requirements and a requirement for “secure storage” of allowed shotguns.  Handguns (pistols) were not impacted at all by this law.
• 1997 – In the wake of the “Dublane Massacre” ownership of almost all handguns was banned.  One of the key selling points of the law was that a very limited number of people would be impacted (fewer than 1 in 1,000).
• 2006 – The Violent Crime Reduction Act was passed and this made it illegal to buy/sell air weapons by mail order.  This includes things like Airsoft guns.  Yep, in the UK it is even illegal to own a fake gun because it looks too much like a real gun.  Hilarious.  Tragic.  Sad.

The path from there to here was implemented through a simple concept:  divide and conquer.  In the late 1980′s UK pistol owners were apathetic about the proposed ban on rifles because it didn’t affect them.  “Why should I care if they ban shotguns?”, they said.  “I only keep pistols and bolt-action rifles.”  In an act of self-preservation they stayed silent, letting their rifle-owning neighbors have their rights extracted through the legislative process.  Those same people who thought they were safe found their rights removed less than a decade later.  The politicians who pushed this law through the UK’s legal system were smart to leave pistol owners out of the fight in 1988.  Attacking the whole gun-owning population of the UK would have been tantamount to the Humane Society of the United States trying to make pet dogs illegal in the wake of an escaped Nile Monitor killing someone’s Terrier.  Patient and resolute the anti-gun movement capitalized on high-profile tragedies to further their agenda.  Baby steps.  Little-by-little they got it done.  And look at the UK now…

Now let’s turn our attention to things here in the USA.  Large constrictors are under attack.  Most of us know that.  And many bearded dragon breeders, ball python breeders, corn snake breeders and leopard gecko breeders could care less.  Why?  Because they don’t keep large constrictors, of course.  That should sound eerily similar to the same apathetic mindset held by UK pistol owners back in 1988.  And look what happened to them less than a decade later.  Every time there is an isolated incident in the exotic animal community the anti-pet movement gains a little more traction to push through another limiting piece of legislation.  Whether it is done state-by-state, the Lacey Act or through the federal law making process, they are as patient and as resolute as the anti-gun zealots in the UK were.

I know how the end of reptile ownership is going to happen.  If we continue on our current path it will mirror what happened in the UK.  The voices of opposition in the UK screamed, “you can’t legislate a madman”, meaning that a ban on firearms would not stop the next massacre from happening.  If someone wants to get a gun and go on a shooting spree it will happen.  No law is going to prevent that.  My screams as a reptile owner have been of a similar vein.  I oppose any legal limitations on the rights of responsible pet owners.  No matter how responsible a pet owner I am there will always be someone out there who is not.  That person will do something stupid and my rights will be removed as a result.

But why?  Why do the actions of a few lead to restrictions on the many?  The answer is simple:  Legislation is a bludgeon tool.  It lacks finesse.  Laws have not, can not and will not deal with subtlety and nuance.  They are a widely cast net that frequently catches huge numbers of unintended victims.  I have already heard it said.  “Our inspectors are not trained tell the difference between a Burmese python and a Boa Constrictor so the most simple course of action is to ban them both.”  If that’s the case then how would a local law enforcement official tell the difference between a blood python and a burmese python?  Simple: He can’t.  Well, we better ban blood pythons too …just to be safe.  And when the time comes to ban ball pythons you can rest assured that Angolan pythons will be thrown out with them.  They look too similar.  And so it will happen; our compartmentalized herpetocultural community will fall in small group after small group.  And each group will remain silent as the others are attacked.  It will probably take the next decade or two to happen but the writing is on the wall.  The anti-pet movement is more than ready to wait us out and I have not seen evidence of the community having the stomach for a long fight.

Is there an alternative to legislation?  Yes!  It’s called self-regulation.  And this is where there is a fundamental divide within society.  Proponents of large government believe that it is the government’s responsibility to take action to provide for and protect its citizens.  Supporters of small government believe that protection is indeed the government’s responsibility but ‘providing’ is the realm of private industry and government should stay out of it.  The government should not regulate the commercial interaction between provider and consumer.  In a system of self-regulation the industry controls itself from within; it’s a commercial ecosystem that has its balance upset when the dirty fingers of legislation are inserted.  Whether we are talking about banking, exotic animals or pharmaceuticals the concept is the same; the industry regulates itself and acts in a responsible manner, no government intervention needed.  In the end the consumer is the real regulator because it is only where there is mutual benefit in a transaction that the transaction can take place.  Even though I would rather not pay $130/month for my iPhone I still do because I find value in the trade.  If my iPhone bill were to double to $260 I would no longer see the value and I would discontinue my service.  The provider is always going to push the edge of course; they are a for-profit entity and will always work to get as much as they possibly can without pushing me past the limits of my perceived value.  In this delicate balance between consumer and provider we don’t need the government to come in and control mobile phone price plans.  Doing so screws up the natural balance of commerce.

When an industry fails to self-regulate it provides a powerful foothold for the supporters of government regulation (banking and health care come to mind here).  And that is where we are today in the reptile world.  There is no shortage of idiocy in the reptile trade.  Someone out there is not securely keeping their reticulated python or rhino viper.  Another guy is selling Burmese pythons and eyelash vipers to 14-year old kids at a trade show.  And let’s not forget the guy who is keeping hundreds of snakes in horrible filth with no food, water or climate control.  None of these people are you, right?  Of course not.  It always seems to be someone else that is screwing things up for the hobby.  The problem is that the consumer:provider mechanism for self-regulation is seemingly absent.  The only thing an individual can do is take care of his/her own business; keep their animals secure, well-fed, watered and in a suitable climate.  They cannot control what another keeper is doing.  This appears to suggest that government regulation is a viable solution, doesn’t it?  Without changing what we do as a community, the answer, unfortunately is ‘yes’.  The ability to own a reptile in the United States will not survive if we stay on our current path.

But how do we self-regulate?  This is a tough question.  As a person purchasing a green anaconda I know what my responsibilities are.  But what about the seller?  It would seem like a no-brainer to say that a person would not sell a baby anaconda to a minor but that has been proved wrong more than once.  Should the seller take steps to make sure the person buying is fully prepared to responsibly undertake the long-term ownership of the animal?  Is that realistic?  No, it’s not.  The retail community doesn’t support it.  If I put somebody through a gauntlet of questions before selling them a green anaconda at a trade show they are just going to go to another table and buy it from the wholesaler who picked up a 20-lot of them earlier that day and could care about nothing other than their method of payment.  The long-term impact:  I am not economically viable and another person owns a green anaconda that is doomed to get sick and die …but not before it escapes a few times because he thinks that putting a book on the screen top of his aquarium is going to keep the snake from pushing its way out.  Because the community is unable to regulate itself it is primed and ready for government intervention.

Reptile community self-regulation seems viable only if there is widespread individual self-regulation and this illustrates the “you can’t regulate a madman” problem.  The reptile community is too large and too diverse in both number and intelligence for there to be any realistic chance to self-regulate.  Aside from “lock in a sock” forms of keeper-on-keeper physical violence I don’t know what the answer is.  But I do know that if things don’t change we are going to start losing our rights at an ever-increasing rate.  And the only people we can truly blame when its over will be ourselves.

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

I have been keeping reptiles for about 20 years and I have been going to reptile trade shows in a vendor capacity (on and off) for a little more than half of that time.  I took a hiatus from the reptile scene in the early part of this decade but I have been back in full swing for more than four years.

In the early-to-mid 90′s reptile trade shows were awesome events; the excitement and enthusiasm could sometimes be carnival-like.  Both vendors and customers came from all around the country to participate.  Show dates were comparatively few and far between and the Internet, as the average persons knows it today, was not reptile-enabled.  There were far fewer breeders (even though many of today’s names remain the same) and many of the animals that are commonplace today were available to most of us only in pictures.  Outside the potpourri of animals in our own collections all most of us could do was look at the small assortment of available books.  My top five books were:

• The General Care and Maintenance of Burmese Pythons by Philippe De Vosjoli.  A tiny and concise book, printed in black & white, but still one of my favorites.  My affection for this book is more sentimental than anything; it was my first book on reptiles.
• The Reproductive Husbandry of Pythons and Boas by Richard Ross.  A bible to reptile keepers.  I really wish there was an updated version of this book, one that reflects all the things we have learned over the past 15-20 years.
• Completely Illustrated Atlas of Reptiles & Amphibians for the Terrarium.  This book is mammoth in size but short in the amount of detail it has on each species.  But in a time when the inventors of Google were still in middle school there weren’t many choices for getting information on obscure reptiles.
• Kingsnakes & Milk Snakes by Ron Markel.  Still relevant today.  Would very much like to see it updated.
• Rat Snakes: A Hobbyists Guide to Elaphe and Kin by Ray Staszko, Jerry Walls, and John Quinn.  Another excellent book, also still relevant.

Don’t be even a tiny bit confused.  These weren’t just books that were in my personal library; these books were in my hands every single day!  I spent hours upon hours poring through the pages, memorizing the images, the content, the latin names, everything I could.  I didn’t just read these books, I consumed their content.  I read them with such frequency that  their pages fell out.  I loved the Kingsnakes & Milksnakes book so much that one day in 1994 I jumped in my car and drove 18 hours to Arlington, Texas just so I could meet Ron Markel and talk to him about gray-banded kingsnakes.  Completely broke and sleeping in my car I spent a week hanging out with Ron, learning everything I could from him (Ron thought I was staying in a hotel.  I was too young and proud to admit otherwise).  It was such a cool experience.    I never made it the rest of the way down to Del Rio, TX to search for gray-bands of my own but a few weeks later I bought a captive-bred pair of them from Brian Barczyk at the Mid-Atlantic Reptile Show (MARS).  To this day  I still owe myself a trip to southern Texas to hunt for kingsnakes.

I digress.  I didn’t sit down to write about books and road trips from the 90′s.  I’m sitting here to write about trade shows.  Having been back on the Mid-Atlantic trade show scene for several years I must say that it is no longer what it once was.  The excitement and novelty of those days so long ago are all but gone.  The market is saturated and it is getting worse.  But it’s not the number of animals that seems to have saturated the market, it’s the number of shows.  The number of reptile trade shows being hosted on the east coast of the US has exceeded critical mass.  A few days ago I sat down to work on my list of show appearances for 2010 and was blown away by the addition yet more reptile shows in the Mid-Atlantic and surrounding area.  Vendors have been complaining for a long time that there are too many shows.  But there the shows are and more and more are being added all the time.

There are several factors at work causing this increase in the number of shows:

• Not everybody knows it but the Hamburg, PA show was actually two different shows.  For years there were two different promoters with different show dates.  The shows were held in the same place and to the customers nothing looked different.  The politics of reptile trade shows has produced a situation where one of those vendors is no longer able to host their show at the Hamburg armory.  In response that promoter has launched a list of multiple new shows in Pennsylvania and surrounding locations.
• The promoter of the White Plains, NY show, which is one of the best trade shows on the east coast, added another show on Long Island last year.  That show continues  to struggle to match the White Plains event.  Both of those shows are outside the Mid-Atlantic but White Plains is a good enough show that it attracts people from quite a long way away.  Me, for instance.  I travel almost nine hours to get there.  I know other vendors who come from several more hours away than me.
• NARBC tried to host a trade show in Northern Virginia.  The show lasted two years before poor attendance caused its cancellation.  Northern Virginia is brimming with reptile people but even NARBC’s first-rate shows didn’t survive in the over-saturated mire of the Mid-Atlantic scene.
• Repticon continues its northerly march, expanding up to Baltimore in 2010.  Prior to this they only went as far as Charlotte, NC.
• One show promoter in the Mid-Atlantic area hosts monthly shows in Virginia and Maryland.  The shows are poorly advertised and poorly attended by vendors and customers alike.  At most these shows should happen every other month (and that’s me being generous).  The show promoter can’t resist the dollars made by the trickle of patrons coming in the door so he continues to try and jam more and more shows down the community’s throat.  More and more vendors are no longer supporting these shows.  Despite the continuing and ever-increasing lack of participation from customers and vendors alike the promoter insists on adding more and more show dates to the schedule.

Show promoters can’t force vendors to come to shows so let’s focus our attention on the real culprit:  the show vendor.  Show vendors are duplicitous.  We say we want fewer shows but we support the promoters when they add new one’s to the schedule.  But why do we do such things?   The prospect of money, of course.   To understand how the money presents itself I recommend you visualize a polar bear fishing at a hole in the ice.  Imagine each morning a polar bear wakes up and hauls himself down to a hole in the ice.  For hours upon hours he sits, patiently waiting for a sea lion to rise up through the water and poke its head through the hole.  Most days the bear goes hungry, leaving at the end of the day with nothing to show but a wasted trip.  It is however, inevitable; a sea lion will eventually poke its head up through the hole in the ice.  The key is for the polar bear to be there when it happens.  When he is, …delicious!  It’s a polar bear payday.  It’s the prospect of getting a meal that keeps the bear coming back.  The sea lions are few and far between, sometimes eluding the bear for painfully long periods of time.  But they seem to pop up just enough to keep him coming back.  It’s an inconsistent and inefficient process but he doesn’t really know any other way to catch the sea lions.  With seemingly limited options he is, at this moment, preparing for his next trip to the ice hole.

• Show vendors are polar bears.  They require a consistent and steady supply of food (money).
• Customers are sea lions (Pardon the crassness of referring to you as a consumable but the reality is that vendors don’t spend money, time and energy to go to shows to socialize and display animals; they are there to give you reptiles in exchange for money.)
• Trade shows are ice holes.  Despite the ease with which they can be created they will freeze over and disappear if left alone.

These days there are so many holes in the ice (trade shows) we don’t know when or if a sea lion (customer) is ever going to poke his head through and spend some money (become a meal).  In response we (the vendors) need to make sure we never miss an opportunity, knowing full well that most of our time at the ice hole is going to be wasted, fruitless.

What the polar bears don’t know is that by running from hole to hole they are helping to create more holes.  The more holes there are the less likely it is the bear will be at the right place at the right time.  The sea lion may pop up through the hole but the bear was staring down into the wrong one.  Opportunity missed, another wasted effort.  If I could sit all the polar bears down for a chat I would tell them not to spend all day in front of the holes.  I would tell them to cover most of them up in order to get rid of them.  By eliminating most of the holes in the ice they can focus their attention on the best producing holes; achieving a similar end-result with a lot less overhead.

Alas, most polar bears are too caught up in the cycle of running from hole to hole to break trend.  They system has them and they can’t break free.  It’s a shame, really.  They are running themselves ragged, effectively chasing nickels when they should be focusing on dollars.  The joy they once derived from going to the ice hole is gone.  It has become a chore encapsulated in frustration.  While the costs of policing all of the ice holes continues to rise profitable results continue to decline and the cycle is made even worse as a result.

The solution is easy to write but tough to implement:  If we (the vendors) stop supporting the show promoters by buying tables they will stop having so many shows.  The trickle-down effect is that customers won’t continue going to trade shows without quality vendors with quality products.  The vendors I have spoken with this all give me a similar argument; that it’s better to go to the show and make a little bit of money than to stay home and make no money at all.  This, however, is only an opinion, not a fact.  I suggest that there are ways to better your business each weekend without going to trade shows.  Consider the following:

• Rather than going to yet another local trade show that is poorly run, poorly attended and barely profitable, stay home and work on your web site.  Have you looked around at reptile web sites lately?  Most of them are in poor shape, terribly outdated and incomplete.  My own site suffers from this in some places.  Web sites are a lot of work if you want them to be good and you can get the time to work on them by foregoing a trade show each month.
• Pick a web site and go take a peek at the list of supposedly available animals.  Most reptile web sites (mine included) are not up-to-date.  Few have actual lists of animals that a person can really shop from.  Some have available lists that are several years old.  That’s damaging to your credibility in the long run.  So rather than going to the next trade show spend that time taking photos of your available animals and posting them up on your web site.
• Update your content, add updated pictures to your photo gallery and incorporate new content into the site.  Make your site better each month by skipping a trade show and adding new information that will cause people to come back on a regular basis.  Static web sites with unchanging content don’t need to be visited on a regular basis.  If you take the time to populate your site with photos, discussions, how-to articles, videos, etc. you will find that you get a good amount of traffic and that traffic will lead to sales.  Most of us don’t have time to do all of this, especially if you spend so many of your weekends doing trade shows.  Skip the trade show and you have created the time necessary to get this work done.  It will pay for itself in the long run.

I am bailing out on a long list of reptile trade shows in 2010.  I just don’t see the value in doing them anymore.  My efforts as part of the reptile community are better spent doing other things.  Don’t get me wrong, I will still attend every Hamburg and every White Plains show.  They are quarterly, which is reasonable and they are still solid staples of the business.  But all of these smaller shows …I’m done with them.  They are a waste of time for vendors and customers alike.  Vendors:  join me on this.  If you do we can make the industry better by restoring value to the trade show scene.

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

Note:  This is not a political tirade.  Please bear with me.  I have a point that deals with reptiles.

First off, who the heck is Phil Zimmerman?  I suspect that very few people in the reptile world have ever heard of him.  Without boring you with details let’s just say that Phil is a super-smart guy in the world of cryptography. In the early 90′s Phil wrote and released a mechanism of encryption called PGP.  PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy.  In reality PGP was really good privacy but I won’t wear you out with the details on what, why, how, etc.  Phil didn’t release PGP to make money and he didn’t do it to become famous.  For a long time the United States government treated encryption as munitions.  That is, the ability to make data secret and unrecoverable was considered a weapon.  Other countries weren’t allowed to have it and our government was vigilant in preventing the export of encryption technologies.  That desire to prevent secret communications by other countries began to spread to American citizens.  There were some people in our government that felt that American citizens should also be denied the right to have a secret conversation; one the government could not get to no matter how hard they tried.  A tide was rising in our government that was seeking to remove the ability of US citizens to keep things secret from the government.  Phil thought this was dangerous (and I completely and totally agree) so he created PGP and released it to the world.  Suddenly extremely strong encryption was available to anybody, anywhere and for any reason.  If you wanted to secure a Christmas letter to your family or your plans to rob a bank there was a mechanism of encryption freely available that would prevent the government from being able to intercept and read it.  Before you get all worked up you need to understand that Phil didn’t want to help bank robbers or terrorists or anybody else who wanted to do things criminal.  He wanted to protect the rights of US citizens to have the ability to choose.  He understood that if something becomes part of our everyday lives it becomes much more difficult for the government to take it away.  He knew that if people began to use encryption as naturally as they used their television remote controls it would become impossible for the government to remove that freedom.  The people wouldn’t allow it.  And you know what?  He was right!  Today you are free to encrypt anything and everything you want, legit or otherwise.  You are free to make the choice yourself, and that’s one of the fundamental beliefs on which the United States is built.  That freedom to make that choice means that you also choose to accept the conseqences of your choice.

Look what happened when the government tried to make alcohol illegal.  Oops.  That didn’t go over so well, did it?  Imagine what would happen if the government tried to take away the automobile.  How well would that go over?  How about our right to choose our own employer and line of work?  Get my point?  Some things are so entrenched in our society that they are impossible to take away.

Most of us are aware that there are efforts underway to eliminate our right to own many types of reptiles throughout the United States.  If they are successful it will be in part because reptile ownership is not sufficiently entrenched in our society, in our homes, communities and neighborhoods.  What I’m saying is that if you are a reptile lover and you want to keep your right to own them then you need to become a reptile evangelist.  Find ways, no matter how small, to further entrench them into our society.  Get a new herper started by helping them with their first snake or gecko.  Talk with an ophidiophobe and help them become less fearful of reptiles. Speak at a high school assembly. Do something.  I’m not saying you have to put on a white shirt, a black tie and ride your bike from door to door preaching from the Book of Reptilia.  Just don’t be quiet.  Because if you are you may wake up one day to find that the reptiles you own are contraband.  And then you’ll have to make the same decisions that people did back in the days of prohibition.  Do snake shows become speakeasy’s?  Do we meet in alleys to do our deals right next to the drug dealers?  If the representatives from Florida have their way you’ll be committing a felony for driving your ball pythons across state lines.  If you breed one and sell it you’ll be a criminal.  Sound insane?  Do nothing and it could actually happen.

If you’re a breeder, get a reptile into every home you possibly can.  They need to know how to care for them, of course, but let’s penetrate the population.  Nobody is talking about banning dogs.  Why?  Because 2/3 of Americans own one.  Let’s get reptiles up to that level!  Every kid who graduates high school should get a diploma, a cookout at their folks house and a ball python!!!  College students should have to have a computer and a kingsnake.  It should be a requirement.

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

P.S. – If you haven’t gotten yourself spun up on what’s going on, read this articles that discusses the proposed ban on reptiles.  The proposed law is masquerading as a ban on importation but it’s actually a ban on ownership.  Scary, scary stuff.

I love going to reptile trade shows.  As a breeder it gives me a chance to buy, sell and trade with other breeders and enthusiasts.  The shows are a lot more personal than doing Internet sales and it’s cool to meet new people, forge new friendships and make a few bucks at the same time.

For me the whole experience of the show is a blast.  I like the hectic scramble of packing for the show, the long drive to wherever the show happens to be, the inevitable lack of sleep and the breakneck pace of the actual show.  The time rockets past and the show is over before I even know it.  I almost always thoroughly enjoy the experience.  But the Long Island Reptile Show that took place last weekend (March 7, 2009) was an unusual exception to the joy I normally get from going to shows.

The show was not good.  Compared to the last Long Island show we attended very few people showed up.  There were window shoppers and families roaming about but the people looking to add some nice animals to their collection must have stayed home.  They were few and far between.

The disappointment of a poor turnout was all the more evident because the previous Long Island snake show was a huge success.  That show was packed!  People were elbow to elbow and it was 2-3 people deep waiting to get to the table.  It was like, well, Hamburg.  Or White Plains.  You know, good shows.  I thought Long Island was on pace to become a good show like those.  It may not be in the cards.

The story relayed to me was that the show promoter did put ads in the newspaper but accidentally listed the wrong address.  I am not 100% sure this is true; it’s just what I was told.  If it is true it may or may not have had an impact on attendance.

I don’t blame the economy (which is a scapegoat for every problem these days) because the last Hamburg and the last White Plains (both in the past month) were excellent shows.  Reptile lovers are relatively impervious to our global financial crisis.

On the very long drive home from the Long Island show there was a lot of discussion about whether or not the show will get another chance with us.  As of today it’s not looking good.  My total drive time (round trip) was over 20 hours (including dealing with rush hour traffic).  That’s a long time to spend in a car only to be disappointed by a poor show turnout.

But I’m optimistic!  The Richmond reptile expo is at the end of the month and there is another Hamburg snake show toward the end of March.  Hamburg always redeems!

See you at the next show!

Colin Weaver

The reptile hobbyist and reptile breeder is in danger of legally losing their right to own and breed many types of reptiles.  Check out my previous post discussing the legislation to ban the ownership of reptiles.  Don’t be fooled by what you read in the proposed bill.  The legislation is not only about banning the import of certain species.  It is about banning the ownership, breeding and sale of these species as well.  It is a very real and very serious threat to reptile business.  The History Channel and its show Monster Quest has helped to propagate fear among the uneducated and aided in getting this ridiculous legislation turned into law.

Colin Weaver