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.