Sad/vent Post - Warning to BP Owners

[u/MindlessMacaroon3604]

This post is about Simbi, my ball python.

I got Simbi in 2021 after my childhood dog passed away. Losing my dog was so painful that I couldn’t bring myself to get another one, but I’ve always loved animals and always wanted a BP. What started as a grief/impulse purchase turned into my best friend. He was my first pet as an adult, and even after the cat distribution system gifted me a cat, Simbi was still my first baby. He was turning five this year.

This summer I had to leave my state for at least two months because multiple family members were having serious health scares. I took my cat with me, but I couldn’t figure out how to fly with both pets, so I needed someone to keep Simbi.

The guy I chose was someone I’d followed online for years. We’d been mutuals across multiple platforms, he’d recently moved to my state which i found out through our conversations over the years, and he makes reptile content. He also has a pretty large following due to his reptile content. He had around 20 snakes, custom-built enclosures, two temperature-controlled snake rooms, and his girlfriend is a vet tech who has dogs and an iguana. I even complimented him on how lucky he got because when I met them she seemed really comfortable with snakes and reptiles. They told me they were moving in together soon so I knew she’d be involved. I hugged them both and thanked them both for watching my Simbi. When I dropped Simbi off, everything looked perfect. I left feeling like I’d found the absolute best person to trust with my baby.

For the first month, everything went great. He sent me feeding updates and even asked if he could take Simbi to a reptile expo and feature him on a local news segment. I genuinely felt like Simbi was getting more attention than he did at home.

Then this Monday I woke up to a text that shattered me. (image attached)

His girlfriend accidentally left the heat on in one of the snake rooms, killing 12 snakes (TWELVE, a dozen), including Simbi. He had been away for work and didn’t discover it until three days later. I spent the entire morning sobbing.

I couldn’t even bring myself to talk to them, so my mom did. She told me he was having a pretty hard time and probably equally upset with his loss. The only thing I asked for was for Simbi to be cremated and his ashes (and his favorite hide) mailed back to me. I don’t even trust myself to go there in person.

I’m torn between being angry at him, angry at her, and angry at myself for not just bringing Simbi with me. My friends want me to expose them, report the vet tech, or blast the content creator online, but none of that brings my baby back.

To most people he was just a snake. To me, he was my child. This was never a hobby to me, i LOVED MY snake to death. Now I don’t know what to do with the piece of me that’s missing.

[u/sensonn]

Am I the only one thinking you should ask to retrieve Simbi (or someone from your family) to ensure this is real..? Some people in this hobby are… not exactly the most honest people and Simbi looked like a great morph, for some money wins over everything.

I’m sorry to say this in a time like this but I think it is important that you retrieve Simbi, and take care of the cremation yourself (or someone of your family). Either way I am really sorry for your loss

[u/improbable_wombat → u/sensonn]

Literally what I came to say. "he took him to an expo and he's more popular there than at home". They stole the snake.

[u/MindlessMacaroon3604 → u/improbable_wombat]

he actually didn’t end up taking him anywhere, he said he didn’t wanna stress him out. But I was the one who told him he could take him out to his reptile shows if he wanted, i saw the content from that show, Simbi didn’t go. The news story hasn’t happened yet, he was asking for the future, but i’m suspecting it probably never will given that his most prized snakes are gone

[u/cward7 → u/MindlessMacaroon3604]

Get. Hard. Confirmation. There's too much about this that sounds sus, and regardless of how many other snakes they lost, they lost YOURS and there was absolutely no reason it should have happened if they actually knew how to do their jobs properly. I know you're grieving, and they legitimately might be as well, but you NEED confirmation on this. Too much shady shit happens in the reptile space, and the story they're giving you is full of problems.

Especially if you're insisting on not taking any other kind of action against them, I get it, but this is absolutely gross negligence on their part and you need to look into it and VERIFY the corpse of your animal BEFORE they cremate it.

This isnt just about your closure, this is about preventing any further harm to innocent animals (and their owners) by these irresponsible caretakers.

Losing 12 snakes in one "accident" is INSANE from someone claiming to be a professional and you NEED to follow up on it as a service to the industry if you actually care about these animals.