"Saved" this from petsmart

[snakelite]

I was in my local petsmart buying some fish when I found this. The humidity in its display was only 20%!!!, but luckily no signs of RI so far. This one looked different from the rest, i don't know if its a morph or not.

[WingedWolfPsion]

Not a morph. Pretty snake, though. Normals can vary tremendously in color and pattern. That one is actually pretty typical in coloration. He has some nice 'flames' in his pattern, and cool dorsal spots.

[rubenjames]

thats a nice looking bp

[Zombie]

Pretty busy pattern. I like it...

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[aalomon]

Not a morph.

I know its hard, but you might want to rethink "saving" snakes from petstores. All they see is a sale. Nothing changes and they will just order another one (plus petsmart uses those dial hydrometers that are useless, so who knows what the humidity was).

[rebelrachel13]

Wow, he's a pretty normal. I love the bright and busy dorsal pattern. It's a shame (but not a suprise) that Petsmart was keeping him in sub-par conditions.

[Sam Rickim]

(plus petsmart uses those dial hydrometers that are useless, so who knows what the humidity was).

I'm new and just got one of those. >.>

But yeah, I know what you mean. Even in Florida here (where everything's on the humid side) the tanks are kept pretty bare. Then again, they're often shipped and are under a little bit of stress at the very least. Never mind that they don't seem to know how to feed them properly - I was told to give pinkies to my ball when she was actually underweight(another thing they didn't catch) and hoppers were more appropriate. Occasionally you'll get one guy or gal who knows their stuff, but you're better off buying from a specialty store. After all, PetSmart's a department store and therefore covers a lot, and herps are in the minority.

[Jay_Bunny]

Very pretty normal.

I used to work for a Petsmart and I can honestly say that the majority of the time, those humidity gauges don't work. You may have seen the humidity reading was 20% but in reality it could have been much more. I fought to get the humidity gauges in our store changed because half of them didn't work. We misted cages (and trust me these tanks were humid enough for ball pythons) but still the guages said 20-30% humidity.

Also, you were probably recommended to feed pinkies from someone who didn't know their stuff. Petsmart's policy is to feed nothing larger than a fuzzy to ball pythons. Our store actually only kept pinkies and fuzzies. I had to request my store manager order in hoppers for the ball pythons, which he did. The person you spoke to was probably just going by the book. Petsmart does not keep ball pythons for long periods of time. They are meant to come in, get fed once or twice and then be sold. They are not feeding them to grow them. They maintenence feed. Pinkies and fuzzies provide just enough nutrition to keep the animal healthy (if the snake eats, anyway) but not enough for them to grow.

[snakelite]

Yeah, the guy that got it for me acted afraid to even pick it up lol.

aal- It was not meant to be a rescue really, I just though of that after I bought it.

[snakesRkewl]

The reason it wasn't a rescue is that you just gave them more money to restock more inventory, IE: even more CH farm raised babies to sit in those horrible conditions.
If nobody bought those snakes I bet you find they stop selling them...