Luckiest Day of My Life.

I had to share this story!

I found a new petstore, hidden deep in the high and mighty part of town, so I decided to have a look around. Quite a nice place, the owner seemed VERY knowladgeble, there were many fascinating exotic mammals, and all the herps looked good with good enclosures.
After picking out a wire rat enclosure, a guy walked in with a pillowcase. Average looking, perhaps highschool age. Pulls out a gorgeous ball and says he doesn't want it anymore!
The petstore owner took it and probed it, finding it to be a female. Then says, "I've already got too many female ball pythons; they don't sell very well at this size."
WHAT?? :O
I immedietly piped up, "I'll buy her from you."
"The guy handed this beautiful girl to me for.....
Ten dollars.

I am BEYOND happy!!!

I haven't been able to weight her, as I don't have a scale yet, but she is nice and heavy, and quite tame. Guess I should run out and enter the lottery tonight!!!

http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n...2/DSCF2313.jpg

http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n...2/DSCF2315.jpg

:carrot:

Wow, what a great deal! And she is a beauty :D

gotta love it when gold falls into your hands :D

You said it! I have been in such a great mood all night!

WOW what luck...she is a beauty also:D

WOW Great FIND!!!!

Thanks!

Great find... but the fact that the store doesn't realise the potential of adult female balls is questionable to me. :P

You're telling me! I was astonished!

Time to "drop by" that store more often, see if lightning strikes twice...:D

WOW what good timing. What a lucky grab!

You can be certain I'll be visiting that store often!!

Great luck and a great ball.

YEAH!!!!! What a deal!!!!Congradulations!!!!
thats what I like to hear... see there are a few good store owners left out there!!!! We need to ban Petco and petsmart and stick to the independents!!!! :salute:

Hear hear! It was nice to go into a petstore that didn't REEK. Kinda smelled like rodents, but what can you expect there, and it was clean rodent smell, not stinky week-without-being-cleaned rodent smell.

Great deal. I have a bin all set up for her. Did you ship her yet? ;)


Rick

The hubby is already too attached! He's so new to reptiles, he thinks she's a huge monster and is fascinated!

Tell the owner you will take all those big, non-selling girls off his hands.

Haha! Great idea!!

Sounds like how I came upon my vision cage I've got my baby Boa in. I walked into a pet store I occasionally visit (they were remodeling so I wanted to see what was new) and I walked around the back room and there was a vision cage!! I've been wanting to upgrade to these but couldnt justify the coin (this model was $149 retail) and I asked the owner if he wanted to part with it since it was obviously used.

To make a long story short, he bought it from a friend without checking it out, it actually came with a corn snake and both the cage AND the corn were INFESTED with mites. So for the small sum of $40 I took both of them home... quarantined and treated the corn (who is now mite free, btw) and soaked the cage in bleach water mix for two days and aired it out for another two. End result? A super nice cage for my boa and a free corn for a guy I know who digs corns :)

Nothing like getting lucky and snatching up a sweet deal is there? :P

Sometimes you do luck into deals at the independent, family owned type pet stores. That's how we acquired Brannagh and Orlah over a year ago. The pet store we went to often made us a deal, to take any bigger BP that was given to them as an unwanted pet, have it vet checked and confirm gende (at our cost of course). If it was a healthy female we could have it for the price of a baby BP. They didn't think these bigger BP's would "sell well" so were quite pleased to move them out quickly and free up cage space. Needless to say we were thrilled to find two bigger females in there and walk out with great snakes for a very sweet price.

Saweeeet!!! :rockon:

she's a pretty girl :wuv:

I wish I had run into someone like you 2 years ago. The snake that got me back into herps was a female ball that someone gave me in '92. After we decided to strictly keep emeralds, I was looking for a home for her. I was giving her away and got no takers. After another year, I ran into my old ecology teacher from high school. He and a partner were now breeding balls, so I gave her to him.

Craig

Incredible! What a stroke of fortune! I find it amazing that the larger snakes don't sell well--what are people thinking? Sheesh.

Around here, larger snakes are MUCH more expensive than babies, in my little experience. Alas! LOL

By the way, I notice how many people on this board like independent pet stores over the chains. And while my usual bias is for independent stores of other types, I've found our independents around here to be grossly inferior to the PetSmarts. Not that Petsmart is perfect by ANY means. But the *best* independent I've found in Charlotte knows almost nothing about their animals (while trying to sell us a ball python that was sitting placidly in my husband's hands, the guy told us that he was known to be a "nipper"), houses them in not-disgusting-but-not-great conditions, and sells puppies and kittens from mills. They also have a display of pond sliders, all of whose toe nails are ridiculously--and painfully--long. To their credit, they also do not sell the turtles, since it is illegal in NC, and the cages do seem to be clean most of the time. In contrast, the PetSmart near us does not sell puppies or kittens, and whenever I've had questions about an animal, they've gone out of their way to bring me the one or two people in the store who know something about the animal. And I've usually gotten knowledgeable replies. Of course, they almost never have snakes at all, but I wouldn't buy a snake from a pet store anyway.

And then, on the other end of the spectrum entirely there is an independent reptile 'exchange' around here that is absolutely abominable. Filthy habitats, moldy water, mite-infested animals, dead turtles floating, snakes with bad sheds still attached, and old feeder animals lying around covered in substrate. Revolting.

So I guess I don't quite understand the fascination with independent pet stores. But then, maybe we just don't have any good ones here and maybe I would understand if we *did*. LOL

As for me, I buy my supplies at the chain store because it's the best we have around here, and the prices are better to boot.

Heather

I agree with you, many independent pet stores can be far worse than a petsmart or petco. So its always a great joy to find one as nice as this!

I think if you find a good independent pet store that keeps their stock well and will do some deals with you, you've found a potential gold mine. However, we have a private pet store near us here in Toledo that is so disgusting I won't set foot in it (plus they sell puppies that I'm pretty darn sure are from puppy mills :mad: ). Just being a private store isn't a guarantee of quality but good ones do tend to be wonderful when you find them and not as rigid as the big chain stores.

I hear you. I refuse to shop at petstores that support puppymills. This one had mostly exotic mammals and reptiles, some fish and birds, and was nice.

BTW, I love your avatar! I've always wanted a crested, maybe someday!