Absurd abandonment story

[ja88er]

Hope this is the right subforum for this, I just had to share this story.

I work at a bigname pet store (the company does require practices that I consider to be sub-par, but I do my best for the animals in my care regardless) and we often get people dumping their unwanted pets on us. Fish, turtles, even a lovebird once (who was adopted by one of our old managers), but last week takes the cake.

A guy comes in with a few pillowcases and says he saw someone trying to dump them, went and saw that they were moving, and decided to take them to us. The person he spoke to gave him the number of a local animal shelter more likely to be able to care for snakes and sends him on his way. 10-20 minutes later, a customer comes in saying someone left pillowcases in a cart in the parking lot. I'm livid to hear this - it's 40F outside! We get the snakes in and try to identify them, while the managers are freaking out and trying to insist that we can't keep them. There's five total, one of which I can't identify, and four that I think might be a variety of king snake, and I manage to get them under heat in the back room while management is calling every shelter and nature center they can think of.

The good part of this story is, I contact someone I know at an organization that does educational outreach programs to schools and has an extensive animal library, and who I know will be able to care for these snakes properly. She swings by and agrees to take the largest two, and identifies the batch as four mexican milk snakes and one pine snake (later re-identified as a brooks king snake). She takes the brooks and the biggest king (who looks like he needs a few soaks and a good shed) and gives me the number of a hobbyist she knows who keeps snakes and turtles who might be able to take the remaining three milk snakes, and maybe some of the red-eared sliders we have left over from previous surrenders. I contact him and he agrees to take the last three, and some of the turtles as well.

So all five snakes are rehomed to reputable people before closing that day, thank goodness. But this was an extremely lucky break, and I can too easily imagine what would have happened if we didn't find them quick enough, or if we weren't able to get in contact with anyone who could take them. The guy who abandoned them was pretty clearly lying about having found them in a bush, according to the person who dealt with him, and our running theory is that either he got a wee bit overexcited at a recent reptile expo, or his landlord found his collection and made him get rid of them. No excuse for not properly rehoming his own animals and instead just dumping them on a local (unequipped, inexperienced) pet store, even after being told that we couldn't take them. At the very least, none of the snakes looked extremely mistreated or underfed, save for the one milk snake who was pretty crunchy looking and probably dehydrated, so that's some consolation.

[tttaylorrr]

absurd, indeed. good thing it has a happy ending, way to think on your feet! it's sad to hear about some people's complete disregard for animals, but those of us who care far outnumber those who don't.

[Sonny1318]

Awesome tale, nice to know some still care. And I agree good out numbers bad.

[Nellasaur]

The number of times we have people come in to the shelter where I work to surrender "stray" or "found" animals that they clearly and provably own is...well, absurd!

Good on y'all for hustling to find the animals suitable homes, though.

[ja88er]

Thank you everyone! I'm just glad I was able to get them all squared away quickly. I'm in occasional contact with the program organization that took the two largest, if I see them any time soon I might post an update on how the noodles are doing!