Designer Geckos
Contributor
- Messages
- 967
- Location
- Boulder, CO
Just thought I'd pass along an interesting adventure we had shipping 4 geckos to Barrow Alaska on the Arctic Ocean shore yesterday.
Barrow is on the farthest north shore of Alaska, a barren area with temps never getting much above 30 degrees in the summer! A customer was very anxious to have us ship leos to him and of course I was very hesitant due to the temps and isolated location. After watching the temps and weather there for days on end, we finally got a break in the weather and temps above freezing, so we went for it.
I used the 12x9x6 Shipyourreptiles insulated box, large size deli cups, crumpled paper, and 2, 70 hour heat packs on the inside lower wall of the box. I feel this placement of the heat packs is better than taping the packs to the lid, because it transfers the heat moderately from the side through the crumpled paper, so the geckos get heat to one side of the deli cups and can move to the other side of the cup to thermoregulate. Seems to work well in cold shipping.
We shipped UPS, because Fedex said it would take up to a week! ?? UPS shipped the leos from Denver to California, to Anchorage. I called continually to follow up on the progress of the shipment. UPS was awesome throughout, and put me in direct touch with the hub in Anchorage. A guy there was amazing and called me repeatedly to update me. He said it normally would take two days to Barrow since it is very remote and they only fly planes over the rugged moutain terrain once a day. He was able to pull some strings and get the box on a plane to Barrow leaving yesterday afternoon. I was ecstatic! The plane arrived in Barrow last night, and our customer was thrilled to get his leos safe and sound....an amazing overnight 24 hour shipment start to finish.
While I do not recommend this shipping to such a high risk area, it does show that with lots of preparation and follow-up, you can ship to remote areas successfully. An early visit from Santa for one happy guy....who just happens to be a neighbor of Santa!
Barrow is on the farthest north shore of Alaska, a barren area with temps never getting much above 30 degrees in the summer! A customer was very anxious to have us ship leos to him and of course I was very hesitant due to the temps and isolated location. After watching the temps and weather there for days on end, we finally got a break in the weather and temps above freezing, so we went for it.
I used the 12x9x6 Shipyourreptiles insulated box, large size deli cups, crumpled paper, and 2, 70 hour heat packs on the inside lower wall of the box. I feel this placement of the heat packs is better than taping the packs to the lid, because it transfers the heat moderately from the side through the crumpled paper, so the geckos get heat to one side of the deli cups and can move to the other side of the cup to thermoregulate. Seems to work well in cold shipping.
We shipped UPS, because Fedex said it would take up to a week! ?? UPS shipped the leos from Denver to California, to Anchorage. I called continually to follow up on the progress of the shipment. UPS was awesome throughout, and put me in direct touch with the hub in Anchorage. A guy there was amazing and called me repeatedly to update me. He said it normally would take two days to Barrow since it is very remote and they only fly planes over the rugged moutain terrain once a day. He was able to pull some strings and get the box on a plane to Barrow leaving yesterday afternoon. I was ecstatic! The plane arrived in Barrow last night, and our customer was thrilled to get his leos safe and sound....an amazing overnight 24 hour shipment start to finish.
While I do not recommend this shipping to such a high risk area, it does show that with lots of preparation and follow-up, you can ship to remote areas successfully. An early visit from Santa for one happy guy....who just happens to be a neighbor of Santa!
I'd be curious to know how they can keep temps up for the leos. What if there is a power failure? And feeders... Here in Florida we don't often have cause to think of reptiles living at the north pole 