Tell Me Your Stories

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Originally Posted by Laooda

Sorry I'm no use in the story area... don't EVEN want to get started...

OK! Here's one... I stood there and heard a Box Chain employee tell a customer that BP's ate crickets... :confused:

Thankfully the son waited till she walked away and said, "dad... we need a mouse"! :rolleyes:

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LOL, that's funny. Crickets?! Wonder if they actually were feeding them crickets?

There's a feed store near me who has "care" instructions on the ball pythons enclosure - baby ball pythons no less - that list chickens and rabbits amongst appropriate food for these snakes. The store in question also sells rabbits and chickens. I've told them repeatedly that it's wrong, and they've laughed me off. I feel bad for those snakes... god knows how many of them get their heads kicked in because clueless new owners believe that sign.

I know of one local shop that kept multiple BPs shoved (actually, crammed) into a small tank with a screen lid.. with no weights on it!! I wonder how many snakes escaped (an easy thing to do.. what, did they think that their magical powers would hold the lid on??) They also had other poor reptiles crammed into tanks as well. One 10g tank had about 8 baby iguanas in it with NOTHING at all but a DRY water bowl. Not even substrate..
I am happy though, because this cesspit is no longer open. Their fish department was sordid too.. fish cramemd into cloudy tanks.
It is sad that people are able to foul up their shops through ignorance. Wouldn't you love to have a shop that's in a profitable area, with the potential for awesome financial gain as well as selling healthy animals to people? Sad that people waste the chance at this.

We have this petstore, Pet Paradise close to us in Shields, and Chris and I would go in there often because they always had some really nice reptiles in there. Just a small 10x12 area with different species of snakes you dont see very often. They had a huge dark room with some really cool fish, and I thought that this was a nice petstore for once. In the past it was really nasty and I figured it must have changed hands, because it looked like they were trying.


Then all that changed in about the span of 3 months. We were just going in there to buy some feeder rats (which were 5$ ea. btw)[we had just talked to what i thought was an owner of the store about feeder rats, and she claimed they raise them themselves and always had every size available.] Well it had been 3 visits in a row when a female worker told us for the third time that they dont have what size we're looking for. (I guess they dont carry , pups, adults, or pinkies) w/e, just poor Customer service.

Anyways, we walked around like usual since it had been a while and there was a gentic stripe, a granite and a normal adult ball in one 10 gallon tank. (yes, for real! asking an outrageous sum of money for them) They had another tank over by the register with probably close to 15-20 baby ball pythons, probably days old. One rock, one icandescent light bulb and bark substrate. There was also 1 baby mouse in the enclosure. All the babies had stuck sheds, most were dehydrated and some looked to be dead and rotting at the bottom of the pile. It made me sick.

Over the nest few months, the poor husbandry slowly spread to the rest of the reptiles, and the last time i went in there, it looked to have several dead or dying iguanas, beardies, random snakes, anoles and others. It was sickening. The rabbits and rats were now overcrowded and sick looking. They now had a baby marmaset (sp) and tons of birds. It looked like those were the only animals they took care of.


Either they owners changed hands again, or this was the true colors of the store. I really enjoyed going there, but I realize now how horrid it was. They always had puppies from weird cross breedings available. They must have a puppy mill somewhere that are supplying them. The ball pythons were morphs! Who would sell them expensive morphs that would just die? I am so sick of that store, I will never go back in there ever again.

I can only imagine how hard it is to run a store... but I have formed a strong belief after several years in the "industry"... Good employees are KEY... it's sad but very likely true that the people working there didn't have enough animal "Umph" to question why the iggy's were turning brown etc... and OR really didn't care.

OR WORSE........ not really able to change the situation because of the owners.