Well, by now most of you now that we have moved. Our old location
on Drachman turned out to have a very strange owner. We don't
need to repeat the story of how he went mental one day and locked us
out of our museum with no notice whatsoever, took actions that killed
many of our animals including our beloved python Min and sanctuary cat
Sarah which he admitted to taking to the county shelter and had put to
sleep. Then during the almost three months we were in litigation
many things were damaged or just mysteriously disappeared from the museum,
never to be seen again.
You can draw your own conclusions. But we are a small non profit
museum dedicated to conservation & education of Tucson's
children about living reptiles and their ecosystems including dinosaurs
(as a 501C3 corporation) and he is just a…. Well,
you can fill in the blank yourself.
Luckily for the good guys we won our preliminary battles
in court and the judge ordered all our stuff returned to us, which of
course it was not. The owner who locked us out just doesn't
know what happened to it or how so much got damaged. Our attorneys
tell us we could sue to recover damages, perhaps in the 6 figure range. But
that takes money that we don't have. So unless
someone steps forward to help us we can not afford to do anything about
it yet.
But the good news is that we are open once again at
a new temporary location. Due to the City of Tucson Zoning regulations we have
had to revert to a gift store and activity center. But you can
still see almost all the cool stuff we had before and now we have 6 different
activities for children of all ages in addition to dino puzzles, coloring,
Paleo sand pit, etc that we had before.
All members automatically get 3 months extension onto their
time due to the unlawful 3 month closing of the museum. Please come
and visit us as we are even more fun than before, although a bit smaller,
and need your support. Weekends still have exciting new themes
and sales in the gift store.
And we are still dreaming of building a new museum. Come in
and see our exciting new model (damaged by the old owner but still seeable)
and let us show you the plans that an architect drew up. This latest
incident was just another bump in the road of life and we welcome it
for what it was. But it is time to move on to new and wonderful
plans for the future. Come join us in our undertaking