A friend came over today

to pick up a couple baby rats to keep as pets. She brought along her friend who just picked up a baby ball from Petco/PetSmart. She started asking me about my snakes enclosures, "Have they been in those bins for their whole lives? I'm trying to make mine grow." I explained that they are very lazy animals and sleep all the time and that was the enclosure that works best for my snakes. She seemed very snide but wasn't rude. She then goes on to tell me that her boyfriend was trying to get their ball on a diet of salmon and betta fish. I was like :confused::O I didn't really want to get into the problems that could arise from this kind of behavior, so I kept talking about how little I actually knew about husbandry and feeding before I came to this site. It's hard to educate people who don't know anything about the species and don't care to learn. I felt so bad for her snake I gave her a few of my weanlings, hoping that she would feed him those instead of trying to force it to eat a betta fish...

Once she left I felt stupid for giving the rats to her but I just couldn't not give them to her. I'm hoping she will find this site, but I'm not sure that I was assertive enough :/ I know I didn't do anything good by giving her free meals and now I feel just dumb.


Sorry for the rant but no one else understood why this upset me so much, and I know all you guys will get where I'm coming from.

fish?! are you serious?! omg poor snake.

Well...at least you helped out her snake...now it won't have to starve or eat a fish. Hopefully she'll join a forum and figure out enough to know better in the future.

Don't worry, you'll become more forceful with some practice. <lol>

Sometimes you just cant beat the stupid out of people......I almost never bring up the fact that i breed snakes or how large my collection is cause i always seam to run into people like your friend......they dont know anything , dont want to learn anything, think they know everything and just love to hear them selves talk. My fuse is just a little short when it comes to people like that!!!!!!

you cant fix stupid :rofl: naw but really good go on giving some rats to her. but one thing would a ball ever even take a fish? keep up with that person also and show her more and more and they should come around.:gj:

Hey thats not as bad as this person I know of who keeps their snake in a fish tank....FULL OF WATER. The only "land" the snake has is a little floating turtle landing with a half long hide on it and a bright light shining down.

I tried contacting this person so I could help them out, but they wanted none of it. "The snake is perfectly fine".

Awful awful stuff..

Here's the thing.. Let her try to get it to eat fish. It's a BP. It simply won't eat fish. Ever. It would stavre itself to death before eating anything which is not a warm blooded mammel.

Did you try to at least tell her that if she keeps it in a large enclosure without the right temperatures on hot and cool side and high humidity, that it will just starve anyway? That it will not eat due to stress. It will die from not being able to digest if it does eat, or it will just get sick and die anyway?

It's not a science to keep a BP healthy. The sad truth is, your friend will learn the hard way. When that happens I will not feel bad for her ignorance, I will feel bad for the poor BP.

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Originally Posted by moravaguy

you cant fix stupid :rofl: naw but really good go on giving some rats to her. but one thing would a ball ever even take a fish? keep up with that person also and show her more and more and they should come around.:gj:

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The thing is that I don't even know this girl... She came over with a friend of mine. I think I may talk to her about her friend, maybe she can get her to come here.

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Originally Posted by Kaorte

Hey thats not as bad as this person I know of who keeps their snake in a fish tank....FULL OF WATER. The only "land" the snake has is a little floating turtle landing with a half long hide on it and a bright light shining down.

I tried contacting this person so I could help them out, but they wanted none of it. "The snake is perfectly fine".

Awful awful stuff..

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WOW :weirdface

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Originally Posted by Foschi Exotic Serpents

Here's the thing.. Let her try to get it to eat fish. It's a BP. It simply won't eat fish. Ever. It would stavre itself to death before eating anything which is not a warm blooded mammel.

Did you try to at least tell her that if she keeps it in a large enclosure without the right temperatures on hot and cool side and high humidity, that it will just starve anyway? That it will not eat due to stress. It will die from not being able to digest if it does eat, or it will just get sick and die anyway?

It's not a science to keep a BP healthy. The sad truth is, your friend will learn the hard way. When that happens I will not feel bad for her ignorance, I will feel bad for the poor BP.

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I just kept talking about how well they do in my enclosures and how they couldn't thrive in a big tanks, how they eat shed and poop regularly... Lo and behold her snake hasn't pooped for her yet, hasn't had a full shed, and eats 2-4 rat pups WHEN SHE HAS THE MONEY... Hence the reason she's trying to feed it her dead betta...


I was like "They tend to be extremely picky and imprint on prey, but good luck with tthat."

Oh and she was saying by keeping it in a large tank that it would grow faster... All I could think about was that thread about the bonsai kitten :rofl:

there are stupid people like this all over the world. i often try to inform people about mistakes they make keeping their animals, and all that i get back is: "i know what to do, my animals are just fine, dont you have better things to do than critizize me?"
the always get angry, although i'm very friendly when pointing at the mistakes,...
but these people do think that it doesn't matter how they keep their animal, as long as it eats and sheds,... :-(

jnballs- no one likes being told they're doing something wrong. its just human nature.

all i can say is WOW i hope she gets bittin

since this forum helped me alot.. i tried testing one of these kinda cocky petshop (i just wont say what) guy telling me everything about i should buy uvb lights blah blah and i'm like, no they are nocturnal. then that pisses him and he is like, oh you need this small water container so your humidity will be high in your aquarium, im like, dont you think its really small? he's like dont worry snake only needs 5% humidity. zomg. and i ask him stuffs that i ask here, i was like, hmmm.. aside from rodents what can i feed it? he's like, rodents are disgusting, even with snakes, sure its nutritious, but if you really want them healthy, you can feed them with sirloin steak from groceries and will save you money too in the long run. -.-

and the killer part.. i said.. oh my, pythons, they grow really big right??
he's like, no dont worry bout the size, if you keep em in a 1 gal tank, they will not grow. they grow depending on the size of the tank.

i ended up feeling the exact same thing as you did.. i wanna educate him, however he is just sooo confident about what he is saying and i would hate to prove him wrong in front of his colleagues and couple more customers. :/

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Originally Posted by kiddomarc

since this forum helped me alot.. i tried testing one of these kinda cocky petshop (i just wont say what) guy telling me everything about i should buy uvb lights blah blah and i'm like, no they are nocturnal. then that pisses him and he is like, oh you need this small water container so your humidity will be high in your aquarium, im like, dont you think its really small? he's like dont worry snake only needs 5% humidity. zomg. and i ask him stuffs that i ask here, i was like, hmmm.. aside from rodents what can i feed it? he's like, rodents are disgusting, even with snakes, sure its nutritious, but if you really want them healthy, you can feed them with sirloin steak from groceries and will save you money too in the long run. -.-

and the killer part.. i said.. oh my, pythons, they grow really big right??
he's like, no dont worry bout the size, if you keep em in a 1 gal tank, they will not grow. they grow depending on the size of the tank.

i ended up feeling the exact same thing as you did.. i wanna educate him, however he is just sooo confident about what he is saying and i would hate to prove him wrong in front of his colleagues and couple more customers. :/

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Dear lord I hope he isn't telling other customers this nonsense....jeez...

I don't care who's around to hear it, if there's an employee of a store feeding customers bull, I WILL speak up and in fact have in the past. Although most of my defensiveness has been toward fish. Most PetSmart people know SQUAT about fish and will just sit there feeding these people rediculous information! For the sake of the animals suck up your pride and say something! They may make you feel 2 inches tall. I've been there! The poor suffering animals can't speak for themselves! "Oh sure, you can keep your goldfish in a little bowl and only change 20% of the water once a month." AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! What about those people who DO listen? There's no way you can know which ones will reject you for the store people or vice versa until you speak up! Just say something like, "well, actually, I read such and such and such." You'd be surprised at how many people will listen to you!

would a ball python even consider a fish like, in the wild? wouldnt there be much easier prey to catch? I'd think a fish would be hard to see/sense, and to catch

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Originally Posted by sarahlovesmiike

Oh and she was saying by keeping it in a large tank that it would grow faster... All I could think about was that thread about the bonsai kitten :rofl:

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It astonishes me how persistent the "grow to the size of the enclosure" idea really is -- despite the fact that it was clearly a myth made up long ago by shady pet store employees trying to sell snakes to unwitting buyers ...

Two years ago I was riding with a veterinarian who asked my if it was true. Now, in his defense, he is a large animal veterinarian who knows NOTHING about exotics ... But still.

Then last year at a party one of my classmates (veterinary student) asked me the same thing. To her, I demanded how on earth she thought that would work (we've just done two years of physiology, for goodness' sake) and she said she didn't know ... It was just something she'd always heard.

Amazingly, I do exotic animal presentations for the "veterinary summer camp" type of thing at my school, and I haven't yet had a middle-schooler ask me about that myth ... But I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

So, take home message: A. commonly-held beliefs will persist no matter HOW stupid and illogical, and B. don't assume that your average (non-exotic specialist) veterinarian knows diddly about snakes. :rolleyes:

I would rather get kicked out of a pet store for correcting the employees than let them go on with bull like that.

Wow, that is just awful! I HAD to comment because I am so shocked! Who in their right mind would be buying betta fish to feed to a frikin snake? Guess they WOULDN'T be in their right mind....sometimes I just really -hate- people and the way they think they know all their is to know in the world. It's things like this that depress me so. :(:mad:

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Originally Posted by sarahlovesmiike

Oh and she was saying by keeping it in a large tank that it would grow faster... All I could think about was that thread about the bonsai kitten :rofl:

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BONSAI KITTY! HAHA omg that's so old but i remember that!

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Originally Posted by Coils

Wow, that is just awful! I HAD to comment because I am so shocked! Who in their right mind would be buying betta fish to feed to a frikin snake? Guess they WOULDN'T be in their right mind....sometimes I just really -hate- people and the way they think they know all their is to know in the world. It's things like this that depress me so. :(:mad:

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It just makes me so upset... I did ask my friend to give her my number so I could help her out, but somehow I doubt I'll be getting a phone call :/