I can see how your able to call all this nonsense. You don't live on a small island, with a vet alleging doom and gloom...
Luckily it was all something and nothing.
But no-one knew for sure for a long time.
MIKE
Sorry, "nonsense" was a poor choice of words. Let me see if I followed the main details of this epic saga correctly (please correct me where I'm wrong, and you know I will be, which is why I don't watch TV mini-series):
* snake becomes ill, then seriously ill and is put down.
* vet, for unknown reasons (possibly cya), refuses to rule anything out, including what would be the worst case scenario - a particularly nasty virus which spreads easily and is pretty much a death sentence to exposed reptiles.
* distraught owner sounds the general alarm prematurely##
* much furor (part of what I lumped into the 'nonsense' part) ensues.
* owner can't get a straight answer from the vet/lab
* other animals become ill, which is revealed to have been probably caused by a mistake (or several, or a chain thereof) in husbandry
* previous owner, who also owns one or more of the newly ill snakes, is implicated then exonorated
* owner is publically crucified for a multitude of sins. Then drawn and quartered. Then fed into a cuisinart.
* owner apologizes for implicating previous owner, sounding the alarm prematurely, and not being able to provide timely information from her vet.
* not satisfied, she continues to be beaten.
Did the owner handle this situation as well as she possibly could? Probably not.
Were a lot of people put into panic? Yup.
Did the owner pay a price? Yup, sure looks to me as if she's been raked over the coals a time or two.
##Should the penalty be more severe, or continue to be metered out? That all depends upon her intent, which only she knows. Think back to the nursery rhymes you heard as a youngster: What was the difference between Chicken Little and The Boy Who Cried Wolf? Both caused a panic, both deserved to be corrected, but only one had evil intentions. I guess it's up to each person to decide which is the case here.
My personal opinion is that the owner was distraught over the situation that at the time her snake was put down she feared the worse and tried to warn the community. "Can't rule out" became "possibly is" in the heat of the moment and she reacted without adequate information. Any other mistakes she made aren't capital crimes in my opinion and she has paid for them, learned from them, passed them on, and hopefully won't repeat it. It just appears to me from my vantage point far away from your small island that things have gotten overly vindictive.
I can tell you that this experience was at the forefront of my thoughts the second I saw my snake (Butter) showing signs of an RI and the next day he was at the vet and began an aggressive course of treatment, which has probably saved his life (he's still not out of the woods, but eating and drinking and gaining weight and showing no signs of the RI any more). It has also made me ultra cautious about cleaning and sterilizing myself and anything that comes in contact with Butter, and my other snake that's suffering from repeated prolapses for still undetermined reason(s) (Vern). I go so far as to take a shower and put on fresh clothes after handling Butter or Vern before even going into the room where my 4 (still) healthy hatchlings are kept, and using sanitizer before and after touching any of them. I'm probably erring on the side of caution too much, but it's working so far.
Again, "nonsense" was a poor choice of words. But does this issue deserve to remain as heated and personal as it has become?
