Time to wake up
I posted a video of Roy Garber from the hit series “Shipping Wars” on A&E tv. I was shocked that on the main page of A&E’s website there was a video about this guys love for his pet alligator along with his love for snakes, frogs and turtles. In my eyes this was a huge win for the reptile community. A public figure speaking out about how cool these animals are. Did I think we need to appoint this guy the face of our community, of course not, but I think there might be some people that enjoy his show that might give reptiles a second look after his testimony.
Surprisingly a lot of repsonses were extremely negative about Roy’s husbandry of his alligator. Don’t get me wrong, I was not impressed either, but it wasn’t like they were being neglected. The gator certainly should have been bigger and a larger environment was a must, but again… this guy was pouring out his love for reptiles and our communities repsonse was to attack him. I tagged him in video and if for some reason he decided to pop in and see what “we” the reptile community were saying he would have seen the attacks and probably never wanted to have anything to do with our fight.
Some responses said that we needed to be careful who we want to respresent our hobby. Are you kidding me… This guy is not a rapist…. He’s a guy that has a successful TV show that for no personal gain decided to tell everyone how much he loves reptiles. Do we need to get in touch with him and tell him to never talk about reptiles again publically? Come on people, we need all the help we can get. We can’t sit back and tell someone that has a much bigger voice then all of us combined that he is terrible for our hobby and a reason that HSUS has ammo for more laws to be passed.
We can sit back in our small community on FaceBook and bitch to one another how we are getting our rights taken away from us, while we push people away because we don’t agree with the size cage they have or the amount they feed their animals. In the meanwhile the special interest groups are paying Michael Vic to do commercials on the importance of dog care.. Funny how our standards are higher then theirs.
Again, I’m not asking for this guy to be the “face” or “voice” of our hobby, but we need to embrace anyone that loves reptiles and if we don’t agree with their husbandry then we need to reach out them and try to educate them rather then shun them as terrible people for our cause and attack them on public forums.
I’m fighting so hard for ALL causes in the hobby.. my question to those that don’t want this “type” of exposure is… What are you doing to change anything??? Go ahead bash me for the way I keep my animals, bash me for Chewy getting bit, bash me for calling you out… In the end I’m fighting for your rights to keep reptiles and my love of my hobby and I’m not just sitting back bitching…. As always sorry for the rant….
