Pet Store Hater

Hey guys,

I'm gonna rant a little bit.

I go to a place called Char's Reptile Store (Houstonians, don't EVER go there) to maybe pick up some cypress mulch (I obviously decided not to).

First thing I spot is a few Ball Pythons in cages with half logs... lovely, they're all in the middle of the enclosure, not hiding.

Next I come across a beautiful JCP. The animal is super skinny and has some stuck shed. The worst part is, the back end of the snake is swollen and red, and still has shed on it. It looks like a bad infection along with scale rot. :(

I walk by a Leucistic Texas Rat snake which is chilling in his water bowl. Oh, you guessed it, there's a nice little tick on him. I mention it to the store owner, who says "That's not a tick. We don't have mites or ticks in our place. It's even offensive that you ask."

I assure them that it is a tick, but no, it's just a bug in the substrate (liar liar pants on fire).

Next she starts telling me that aspen is bad for snakes, and then goes on to tell me that racks are horrible.

For those of you that have racks, you guys are "puppy-mill breeders", according the the store owner and the "herp community."

I mention all of you that successfully keep your snakes in racks, along with Brian Barczyk, BHB.

But no, she's right, I'm wrong. Racks are bad.

She's right because her snakes have horrible enclosures (including burned flexwatt), ticks, nasty infections, poop, and stuck sheds. Brian Barczyk is wrong because he has breeding, feeding, and shedding snakes in CLEAN enclosures.

I hate pet stores.

Join me?

bump.


Would contacting the SPCA have any effect? That JCP seemed to be a in a pretty bad state.

Animal Planet has a Houston edition of "Animal Cops". There is someone there that checks on these things in the Houston area but I don't know the name of the agency.

I deal with a place here in Mo. called Brothers Pets. They are basically the same way. I have contacted every agency I could and everyone blows it off and says "not our jurisdiction" I am really sick of it and nothing I can do. But hey if you want mite infested burms at 40 bucks with a 10 gallon tank, they are a great place to go. Or if you want a dead tarantula laying in its water bowl dead and covered in maggots, they are awesome. Hey and according to them you can house a corn, a ball, and a boa all in the same cage...because they are.

I know how you feel. We have a pet store here in town (I even hate giving them the credit to be called a "pet" store) that has a sign outside. Occasionally when it says "ball pythons $25" I soooooo want to run over and stick another sign beside his.....

"get em quick before they die!" :(

Is it legal to put up a sign next to the store saying something of the lines of

"Don't buy from these guys!" ?

Alright I contacted the SPCA... they should check up on them within 48 hrs. I'll keep you guys updated.

How did it go, Matt? Any news?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DutchHerp

Is it legal to put up a sign next to the store saying something of the lines of

"Don't buy from these guys!" ?

---

Probably. It would either be on their property or property owned by the city so likely you couldn't do it. :(

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DutchHerp

Alright I contacted the SPCA... they should check up on them within 48 hrs. I'll keep you guys updated.

---

Follow-up and make sure they did go. Please let us know how it all turned out.

Well... I got a call from the Pasadena police department, but they claimed they never contacted me. I'll contact the SPCA later and ask 'em how it went.

I'll keep you guys updated.

Mike, I feel you man.

My friends and family are always like, oh if like reptiles so much, why don't you get a part-time job at a pet store? The only problem is pet stores usually treat their animals really badly.

What you are doing here is good, keep it up and keep us posted!

I hope this store gets rocked so hard it flips and drowns.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by zhang317

Mike, I feel you man.

My friends and family are always like, oh if like reptiles so much, why don't you get a part-time job at a pet store? The only problem is pet stores usually treat their animals really badly.

What you are doing here is good, keep it up and keep us posted!

---

Not Mike, brother. ;)

Matt, I feel your anger, hon. I've experienced some really horrible pet stores, and GOD are they stubborn pricks. The only thing you can do is stop enabling them, call the SPCA, and push the envelope to get them shut down. It sucks, though. Those poor animals are the ones who suffer for the ignorance. Keep kickin' butt, though.

Weird all the pet stores around where I live is pretty good. Even the petsmarts take good care of the animals. I guess it just depends on the staff, because at the petmart I go to that animals are all healthy and what the staff says there, actually comes to terms with info I find here. I even got my corn snake at the petsmart, and I got a healthy corn snake that eats like a beast!:taz:

I'll keep trying. My photography class is right by them, so I can prepare a sign...just put it up there, close to them.

Ive hated all pet stores I've been in in Houston and in Austin, I've been to chars, didn't like it.


The only pet store I've liked has been one I went to in Rochester/Spencerport, NY. I forgot the name.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by zackw419

Ive hated all pet stores I've been in in Houston and in Austin, I've been to chars, didn't like it.


The only pet store I've liked has been one I went to in Rochester/Spencerport, NY. I forgot the name.

---

Char's place sucks... geez..

Not sure if I put this in my original post, but she said to put the animals in natural looking surroundings.

That must be why she had a beautiful savanna monitor in a 30 or 40 gal!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DutchHerp

Not Mike, brother. ;)

---

Matt, my bad

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DutchHerp

Char's place sucks... geez..

Not sure if I put this in my original post, but she said to put the animals in natural looking surroundings.

That must be why she had a beautiful savanna monitor in a 30 or 40 gal!

---

tsk tsk

ever been to petsuplenty (sp)? I used to go there, in Houston. I think they might have closed down. They have a poisonous snake room. They told me to put my BP on gravel as bedding! I believed them at the time because I didn't know as much as I do now.

I know how you feel... I visited a store, Pet Safari, in Tampa recently with my fiancee and one of her friends. I won't go down the laundry list of complaints, but it suffices to say that they were pretty terrible. The poor ball python was in a 20L with repti-carpet, urate and feces everywhere, no hide *at all*, and soaking in its water bowl because it had mites crawling on its head. I was tempted to buy it as a rescue effort, and my fiancee urged me to, but I realized that financing the store wouldn't help. They would just replace that poor python with another equally miserable and poorly cared for snake.

I just thought of this... do you have a local TV news station that does "street beat"? We have one here in Jacksonville that was hosted by Ken Amaro called "On Your Side". It's a section in the local TV news that highlights bad businesses and good businesses from viewer reports. My husband's sister-in-law got screwed by a car dealership one time and so she called Ken Amaro. Ken immediately called the dealership and it took, literally, 2 minutes and the dealership cleaned up their act! They were too scared to be put on TV, I guess. Anyway, if you got something like that in Houston, it would be worth a shot to give them a call and see if they can highlight this bad business in the news!

I'm actually surprised how hard it is to report pet stores. On the Michigan gov's website, they give quite clear instructions on how to report a pet store for negligence and and abuse.

Here close to my home town there is a pet store called Pet's Paradise. They were well known for fresh water fish, and apparently are stand up in that department, but EVERYTHING ELSE SUFFERS.

We are talking puppy mill supporters; always had those mutts for sale! At least a dozen on hand all the time!

Reptiles were terrible. No humidity, one lamp, ton to a cage. I remember walking in and seeing a PILE of baby bp's, with at least one dead one at the bottom of the pile, and a mouse wandering around in the enclosure. :mad:

On top of that, their bird sections sucked, they kept primates in very small cages, and the small animals were all crammed in too small of enclosures and often sick. I unfortunately did not know what a healthy rat was and bought most of my founding stock from this store. Needless to say, they were very poor rats to breed. My Petco females were large and very healthy girls, dwarfing the rats from this store.


So yes!!!! I feel your pain, luckily this Pet's Paradise went out of business, and I hope they stay closed!!!

I do not put up with bad petstores, if theres a problem I tell them and hope that they fix it while im there. Once they had some Terrapins with some painted turtles and red eared sliders, I told them not to mix these because every time I went in another Terrapin was dead with a red eared slider chewing on it. The manager said he will not mix them anymore thankfully because it was a nightmare for them.

Ive been kicked out of a few petstores ( Petzone, Petstore in mall for example) for arguing so much, not that id like to go back and so far one of them has been closed down.

Keep working on it, in time something should change.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by zackw419

tsk tsk

ever been to petsuplenty (sp)? I used to go there, in Houston. I think they might have closed down. They have a poisonous snake room. They told me to put my BP on gravel as bedding! I believed them at the time because I didn't know as much as I do now.

---

Man that's horrible... gravel; amazing.


I think those poisonous snakes are extremely rare, and not in captivity at all...sounds a little suspicious. ;)

Yeah, I have no clue how they got them. They had black and green mambas, spitting cobras, pit vipers..all that junk.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by zackw419

Yeah, I have no clue how they got them. They had black and green mambas, spitting cobras, pit vipers..all that junk.

---

I meant the fact that they had poisonous snakes, instead of venomous. ;)

Although there are some poisonous snakes... just never seen one, only once on TV.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DutchHerp

I meant the fact that they had poisonous snakes, instead of venomous. ;)

Although there are some poisonous snakes... just never seen one, only once on TV.

---

Lol I get it now, took me a while to catch on :D

I have tried and tried everything. I can't get brothers pets to change. They have been and always will be a horrible store.

Oh my brothers, lets go and have a real horrorshow time at this merzky establishment. Lets go Matt my droog we will have a guff at the devotchkas and malchicks that work for this establishment. We will have a tolchok the store and its employees until they are all spoogy. Then we will save all the reptiles and escape before the millicents arrive. It will be a fun razkass to tell. :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by eulenspiegel

Oh my brothers, lets go and have a real horrorshow time at this merzky establishment. Lets go Matt my droog we will have a guff at the devotchkas and malchicks that work for this establishment. We will have a tolchok the store and its employees until they are all spoogy. Then we will save all the reptiles and escape before the millicents arrive. It will be a fun razkass to tell. :D

---

AWESOME. :gj: 5 stars for that!

A Clockwork Orange, an amazing book and an amazing movie :)

Don't be foolish. Not all pet stores are bad.

If you reported legitimate negligence, good for you. If you're blowing a bad experience out of proportions, keep in mind the consequences before you act.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Soterios

Don't be foolish. Not all pet stores are bad.

If you reported legitimate negligence, good for you. If you're blowing a bad experience out of proportions, keep in mind the consequences before you act.

---

When you know what a healthy animal looks and acts like, it's hard to mistake negligence.

And what are the consequences of reporting concerns? That the pet store gets checked out? Sounds okay by me!

My hometown pet store isn't all that bad. They buy mice and rats from me and they listen when I teach them about BP husbandry.

They call me the snake wisperer because one day I went there and every single employee had been called in to search for the missing BP. They had been searching all three floors and the basement for about three hours when I walked in and turned over a display hide on a shelf right next to the empty enclosure!

I didn't get to read every response. Matt, it sounds like calling your group is a good thing. The problem with carpets is that they are such a skinny snake they don't look like they would eat much more than a fuzzy when they need a small adult mouse. Something not too many pet shops know. The red on the tail is a red flag though (no pun intended) and should be dealt with properly by a vet.

Racks are bad! I have to agree. They are bad because the pet shop can not get them at a reasonable price to market them for you to buy! These people are there to make money. If you're buying a 300 dollar rack instead of their over priced glass cages, plus their lighting, bedding, and everything else they lose money.

I'm lucky enough to be fairly close to a pet shop that is very well taken care of with a small staff of volunteers who make it awesome. I go in on most Saturdays to help out, as I work a full time job Mon-Fri. On occasion I take in a carpet or chondro and no one even cares. I walk around with it, explain it to the customers. Knowledge is the best tool you can have, without it you would be no where. I learn something new every day and I think it is great. Matt, do not let close minded pet store owners get you down. Take appropriate measures and keep us posted!

David,

I don't know all that much about how big carpets are at specific ages, but it was at least 5 feet. It was extremely skinny though, I could see the spine. I would be feeding the animal small-medium rats.

I wish I was close to a pet store like that. And the shops do bring me down... I can't stand to see animals created unfairly. It hurts me because I love all animals and it's just plain unfair.

I could finally get the number of the investigator but I got voice mail... I'll try again tomorrow.

Wish me luck.

You think its worth it to attempt to save it?

Ahhh, Most pet stores just carry juvies so I was going off that. You know what that say about assuming.... <It really does :colbert:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by littleindiangirl

I'm actually surprised how hard it is to report pet stores. On the Michigan gov's website, they give quite clear instructions on how to report a pet store for negligence and and abuse.

Here close to my home town there is a pet store called Pet's Paradise. They were well known for fresh water fish, and apparently are stand up in that department, but EVERYTHING ELSE SUFFERS.

We are talking puppy mill supporters; always had those mutts for sale! At least a dozen on hand all the time!

Reptiles were terrible. No humidity, one lamp, ton to a cage. I remember walking in and seeing a PILE of baby bp's, with at least one dead one at the bottom of the pile, and a mouse wandering around in the enclosure. :mad:

On top of that, their bird sections sucked, they kept primates in very small cages, and the small animals were all crammed in too small of enclosures and often sick. I unfortunately did not know what a healthy rat was and bought most of my founding stock from this store. Needless to say, they were very poor rats to breed. My Petco females were large and very healthy girls, dwarfing the rats from this store.


So yes!!!! I feel your pain, luckily this Pet's Paradise went out of business, and I hope they stay closed!!!

---

i feel the same about pet paradise! and im in ontario canada! i went in to check things out and was totaly blown away by the awful conditions, they had female scorpions crawling around on what looked like old snake bedding that had bad shed all mixed through it, the one and only BP in the place looked as if it was on its last breath i asked the hatch date of the snake and all they said was WE HAVE NO IDEA! poor little guy had no hide, and no heat source and was covered in stuck shed. your right the fish looked like they were the only things being taken care of in the place.