Tell Me Your Stories

I am writing an essay for my english comp. class about pet stores giving new snake owners bad or wrong information. I am asking for your horror stories that I can use in my essay.

disclaimer: I will not use real names of people or stores.

I had a guy running a cruddy petshop, who bragged of 15 years experience breeding snakes, tell me not to bother breeding balls because it's just too hard. He also told me not to give the balls any hides because it "makes 'em mean".

I should add that he kept multiple adult and subadult balls in 10 gallon fish tanks with screen lids and no heat sources.

Mike and I were in a local chain petstore awhile back, checking out the ball pythons in a tank. All hatchlings, all underweight and most had stuck sheds. This would have been upsetting enough but we noticed something just barely seen under a fake tree cage ornament. Finally getting an employee's attention we had them remove the "tree". Hidden under it was a dying baby ball python. Skinny beyond belief, encased in it's own old shed, dehydrated and barely alive.

When we expressed our shock and called for a manager to attend, her explanation was "oh we must have missed that one in there, didn't know it was there". We then insisted they remove this dying baby and get it vet treatment. I highly doubt they did more than toss it in a freezer in the back room but at least it was no longer suffering.

How do you "miss" a snake in an enclosure? How do you not know how many hatchlings you have currently stuffed in a tank? How long had it been since that enclosure was cleaned that you couldn't see that snake that both Mike and I were able to see stuffed under that fake tree? How does any store morally sell hatchlings in such awful condition let alone living with a dying snake in their enclosure.

While in this instance they did not directly "give" us information, the way they keep these snakes implies that this sort of thing is just fine to the new keeper. They hold themselves up as the pet experts while keeping snakes in ways that my children would know are wrong! Their example when it comes to husbandry is a terrible one to follow but we often see it on this very forum..."but this is how the pet store I got the snake from did it". :(

Thank you both for your stories. They both will help me with my essay.

Totally off topic: It was nice meeting you!!!! :D I was the one that had no idea where we were going... till we landed at McD's! :P

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Originally Posted by Laooda

Totally off topic: It was nice meeting you!!!! :D I was the one that had no idea where we were going... till we landed at McD's! :P

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LOL. Hey, it was nice meeting you too. McD's was easy to find, I don't know where you were going.

Has it gone down to 5 years now?

Any more stories would still be appreciated!

Any one have any other stories?

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Originally Posted by Elvyra's Keeper

LOL. Hey, it was nice meeting you too. McD's was easy to find, I don't know where you were going.

Has it gone down to 5 years now?

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Hahaha.... yea, my ever-wobbling time line! :8:

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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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.