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Reptile & Amphibian
News Blog Keep up with news and features of interest to the reptile and amphibian community on the kingsnake.com blog. We cover breaking stories from the mainstream and scientific media, user-submitted photos and videos, and feature articles and photos by Jeff Barringer, Richard Bartlett, and other herpetologists and herpetoculturists.
Monday, February 22 2021kingsnake.com knocked offline by historic storm For the first time since launching in February of 1997 kingsnake.com's servers were knocked offline several times for long periods during last weeks polar vortex. The servers, located in Austin Texas, were victims of state mandated rolling blackouts that impacted many areas of Texas. Though the servers were backed up by a large uninterruptible power supply and a commercial generator system, those systems themselves eventually ran out of power. Additionally upstream internet switches also failed due to power issues thus causing a double-whammy, so when power was restored the servers were still unreachable. Those systems have all been restored for several days now and operations are mostly back to normal. Kingsnake.com will be totaling up the downtime and offering our advertisers credit to their accounts once we have determined the extent the outage. We apologize for not being able to provide you the level of service that you have come to expect for the last 24 years, but the situation was beyond our control. That being said over the last 2 months kingsnake.com has been upgrading to a new set of Dell PowerEdge servers that are bigger, faster, and more capable than our old fleet of PowerEdge servers. For the first time our servers will be "viitualized", utilizing the multiple cores that the more current generation of Intel processors offers. This has required us to upgrade the core software that runs our servers several generations at once, causing a few bugs here and there that need to be squashed. We have gotten most of them but every once in a while a new one unexpectedly crops up. If you hit one of those bugs please let us know by using our contact form. This weekend we will be upgrading our classified ad server and you can expect brief periods of down time on Sunday, as well as a few bugs going forward. Next weekend we will be upgrading the main site including the blog, events system, business directories as well as other features. We have already upgraded the servers for the forums, forum archives, photo gallery, and banner ad system. We hope to have all our server upgrades completed by March 15. Sunday, February 21 2021ACTION ALERT: ILLINOIS - Illinois House Bill 3889 We have an urgent action alert from USARK regarding the return of the "animal program ban" that has returned in Illinois. As it is written, it could end even the most common of after school educational programs. From USARK: This bill bans much more than lions jumping through rings of fire. It is a ban on taking a Greek tortoise into a classroom for an educational program about reptiles. It is a ban on taking a ball python, a red-eyed tree frog, a parakeet, and a hedgehog into a library for an educational show discussing the differences between reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals. It is a ban on llamas and any other non-traditional livestock at the State Fair or county 4-H fairs. Basically, if an animal non-native to Illinois is placed into a vehicle and taken to any location where someone will see it, other than a veterinarian in a private room, then it would become an illegal activity, and you a criminal. You could receive a year in jail and a $2,500 fine for taking a leopard gecko into your child’s classroom for a presentation. The Chicago Herpetological Society hosts the largest and oldest hands-on reptile exhibit in the country. It reaches tens of thousands of people annually and this bill could destroy it. It could end programs coming to your child's school, day care or scouting program. The impact to the reptile community in Illinois would be devastating. USARK has detailed instructions for reaching out to representatives and what we as a community can do here. Wednesday, December 30 2020Learning Life from Snakes Woohoo, the author’s snake, photographed in Mississippi in 2020.Credit...Houston Cofield for The New York Times Do you ever have an issue explaining why you love your pet snakes so very much to friends? Have you ever had problems putting into words your love of those cold blooded pets that share your world? Never fear, we all have! A recent opinion piece in the New York Times puts our love of snakes into a special light. The snake is as much symbol as animal, and this oversaturation of meaning prevents us from seeing the snake clearly. In reality, they are gentle, healthful to the environment, “more scared of you than you are of it,” a sort of tragic hero of the ecosystem that is, when gazed upon without malice, beautiful. To read the whole article, click here. BTW, a hearty congrats to WooHoo for reaching 25 years old! Friday, December 4 2020ACTION ALERT: MI introduces "dangerous animal" legislationOn December 1, 2020 House Bill 6455 (HB6455) was introduced in Michigan that could impact many reptiles keepers. The reptile portion of the bill does primarily impact ownership of venomous, crocodilians and some monitor species. While it is not an outright ban and offers provisions for owners to keep their pets, it can have very far reaching implications. The reptiles impacted by the Bill are: “Dangerous reptiles” per HB6455: Our friends at USARK have made it easy to speak out to your representatives. Please visit the USARK page here for the full action alert. Monday, November 16 2020Stacey Laurin cancer fundraiser If you are up in Canada, chances are you know Stacey Laurin. Stacey is known for both her ball pythons but also her willingness to work with others to help spread the reptile love. She is always there to help people, especially beginners to get set on the right path. Now it is our turn to help. Stacey has been battling a very aggressive ovarian cancer for 4 years and has recently come back with a vengeance. Now Stacey could use a little help from the community she has helped for so long. From the GoFundMe "Stacey is currently at a medical facility receiving pain management medications and treatments. Unfortunately alternative cancer treatments are quite costly and a hard burden to bear. She is now in the fight for her life, if Stacey has ever touched your life, please consider donating to her cancer treatment, or simply sharing this fundraiser." There are two big ways you can help Stacey. The obvious answer is donate, but if you can not donate, please share this around. Please check the GoFundMe out here. Monday, November 2 2020Chameleon rediscovered after almost a century A male Voeltzkow's chameleon in Madagascar. Photo courtesy CNNAfter nearly a century of being elusive, the rare Voeltzkow's chameleon was recently rediscovered on an expedition of scientists from Germany and Madagascar. "Our planet is probably facing the beginning of an enormous extinction of species, often referred to as the 'sixth mass extinction', the 'Holocene extinction' or the 'Anthropocene extinction'," researchers wrote. To read more and see the video, click here. |
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