Tough Day In Santa Fe, Texas

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Posted by Al Stotton on May 13, 2003 at 08:33:07:

In Reply to: Tough Day In Santa Fe, Texas posted by jcherry on April 30, 2003 at 01:48:01:

only just heard bout this tragedy!!...So sorry John,Cindy.
I have limburg/kardon line jani and deppei here you might like to have for free to help build that great line up to strength again.Also i have 2 striped juve deppei deppei one im sure i can let go to a worthy cause such as yourself.
Let me know if theres anything else i got you may need.
Hope to see you back on here soon

:The only reason I am relating the following story is to hopefully impress upon folks the importance of temp. control and to inform folks about what can happen. It is probally the worst thing that has happened to me in My adult animal related life.

:When Cindy and I returned from then saturday DFW Herp Expo Sunday night after going by a miniature horse show Sunday. I walked into a nightmare, evidently while we were gone the air conditioner in the snake house short-circuited filling the snake house with smoke and driving the temps way above 110 degrees even at 4:00 am in the morning when we arrived home. I knew we were in trouble when we drove into the driveway, the smell from the snake house was horrible. The scene was absolutely the worst thing I have ever dealt with in the past thirty + years of working with animals. It was like they had been baked and were liquefied in a lot of cases. All in all we lost in adults 243 pituophis, 76 kings, 52 milks, 39 corns and 60 various otherbreeders such as aurora house snakes etc. Over 350 of the adults that died were gravid females, which means production would have been really good this year.

:We still have a few animals left, about 60 adult and sub adult and all the sale animals we had left over from the show, but this is as I said the most devastating blow in my adult animal life. Needless to say we lost most of the deppei deppei, bulls, pine and gophers in the collection. Some had been projects we were working on for the past 12 - 15 years. The A/C unit was an in wall Barge Unit with double thermostats on it, that had been serviced about three weeks ago. But somehow the unit overloaded and malfuntioned, I am sure an electrician could explain it but I can't.

:So now reconstruction begins, I will be trying to buy animals back in the pit. line that we have sold in the past and pick up where this has left us. Needless to say the production this year will be very limited with the majority of the production this year going back into the collection. So folks that have been waiting for our animals to be born need to try and find an alternate to our animals in most cases.

:I will post pics. of the devastation later in the week.

:The only positive thought I have come up with is the following, which was sent to me by a friend last week sometime:

:Two angels were traveling and stopped by a rich mans house for the night, he had them sleep in the basement and gave them bread and water to eat and drink. During the night the older more experienced angel patched a hole he found in the rich mans wall, the next night they stayed at the home of a poor farmer and were fed the best the man had to offer and slept in the farmers bed for the night. When they awoke the next morning the cow which was the only source of income to the farmer was dead. The young angel was upset and ask the older angel how could he let something like this happen to the farmer when he had been so kind. The older anigel then said " sometimes things are not what they seem" , he explained that in the hole in the wall was all the rich mans money and he had covered it to teach him a lesson and the angel of death had come for the farmers wife the night before and he had given death the cow instead and spared the farmers wife. So if it means that by loosing all these beatiful animals I have been given Cindy, someone in my family or one of my good freinds for a while longer then so be it. But right now I don't understand at all.

:
:Take Care and God Bless you all.

:John Cherry
:Cherryville Farms

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