My friends and I went to Petsmart....

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Originally Posted by Daigga

I will point out that despite it being a king known for eating other snakes, there doesn't seem to be anything else in the setup. It's the snake in the critter keeper, but there isn't any bedding or anything in the glass enclosure besides for the keeper, so I'm assuming there aren't any other snakes in there it's being kept from. I suppose it's possibly this shop is like the petco near me with a loose divider that the king could possibly get through to other snakes?

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If the setup is like the ones at most pet stores in my area (IE some variation of this picture ((usually minus the awesome turtle part): http://rbrowning.homestead.com/hulen27.jpg )).

Then they are notoriously insecure for small snakes especially if the unit is older (in this economy it probably is). I worked at a pet supplies plus when I was in high school and it wasn't uncommon to find a green anole hanging out in another section of the of the unit. If a lizard can find a way into other units you can bet a snake could.

Also its possible that there are other critter cages in the same unit that just aren't visible in this picture. And even though I would keep substrate in the whole unit, mostly for looks I would go back up to where I mentioned this terrible economy we are going through and no manager is going to be OK with just putting substrate in there if all the animals are in little units.

90% of reptiles sold at these stores are very easy to keep alive, most of my time as a pet store employee was spent cleaning algae off the inside of fish tanks and getting feeders for people. The second you open a reptile cage to do anything in it someone will indefinitely bother you asking to hold it or to watch something eat which wouldn't be a problem if they were trying to buy it but if someone is interested in buying an animal they will come to you. But being in the middle of cleaning any cage in a unit where the animal could escape, fall out, or something like that distractions are not in the best interest of the store or the respective critter.

I had a policy of not trying to sell any animal to someone who didn't come in looking for one even though the manager probably didn't care for that almost no one returned animals I sold.

That's weird because I know it Petco we keep them in what looks to be a 5 or 10 gallon tank and once they get too large to stretch they are put up for adoption for length of stay

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I think what bothers me most is Petsmart in my area will keep a 5 gallon tank with a larger king snake or BP in it and then put one of these critter keepers in there with them WITH a corn in there and just leave it

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1.1 Red-tail
0.1 Albino corn