Some of you might have recalled me stating that I was awaiting the arrival of a large gravid female Florida Green Water Snake, right? The guy I bought her made me suspicious after I'd already sent him the money order, not letting me know when it arrived, then not telling me when he'd sent out the snake or giving me the tracking number until I had to trace HIM through the phone company and call him. Anyway, the snake was sent out on Monday, second-day air, and arrived this evening around 7 pm, DEAD. Not just dead, but in an advanced state of decomposition. This was a massive, five-foot animal, as large as many Blood Pythons, put into a pillow case and crammed into a 12 x 12 inch cardboard box, with no Styrofoam or other rigid padding between the snake and the walls of the box other than one layer of bubble plastic underneath. I knew something was wrong when I opened the box, and that smell hit me, and I saw that there was no protective padding and the bag was soaked in a dark fluid. I was hoping that maybe she'd given birth en route, but I knew that what I would find would not verify that. What I did find was my worst nightmare. I thought that maybe she'd been squashed, since there was blood everywhere, and big slits in the snake's undersides through which her intestines were visable, but after I took this mess outside and emptied out the bag, it became apparent that this was a rotting carcass that had already bloated and burst due to advanced decomp. The skin was sloughing off and the eyes had already disappeared. This son-ofa-female dog had sent me a dead snake. I've seen all sizes of animal carcasses decomposing in our climate(which has been cooler than normal, temps in the 80s for the past couple of days, mostly cloudy), and I know that there is no way that an animal that size, which would have weighed as much as a good-sized house cat, can possibly decompose to that extent in two days, NOT in an enclosed space with no access to flies(speaking of which, they swarmed all over the box when I took it outside). There is simply no way that this animal was alive when he shipped it, not only having to travel from just a few states over. Either he put her in the bag dead, or he had been keeping this poor animal in that bag, taped up inside that little box ready to ship out, ever since I contacted him and told him I wanted her, which was nearly two weeks ago. I took detailed photographs of the snake, especially the head, both inside and outside the bag, and of the inside of the box she was shipped in, showing all the blood and fluid and the flies gathering on it, showing that there was no protective padding at all, not that it would have mattered much. After calling him and telling him the snake was dead, which was before I actually dumped it out of the bag, I emailed him and demanded my money back. I don't want a replacement, not from him, not from anyone who'd ship anything like that. I'm giving him until tomorrow to verify that he's sent me a full refund, and then I'm naming names and putting up the photos on the internet. There is absolutely no excuse in this, none.

pitbulllady