Oh man

Normally I'm not squeamish at all. Really. Toss me a tarantula or any creepy crawlie and I'm usually pretty happy. You name it, I've probably encountered it.

Well. I finally had a moment of sheer 'EW!' the other day. I even did the girly 'Get it off me!' dance. Oh yeah. It was priceless.

On our local reptile society forum, a new member posted about her purchase of a ball python hatchling from a local pet store. She expressed concern because she had paid for the snake, and they were holding onto it because it hadn't eaten. When she requested a refund, they told her they do not give refunds, but neither would they release the snake. She then found out that 'it ate', but that they had force fed it. Upset, I offered to go with her to check out this animal and see what we could do to get the situation resolved. I'm fairly confident and outspoken, so I wasn't afraid to make a scene (haha).

Met her there and we went to the reptile area of the store. The guy working there was actually pretty genuine and nice. We asked to see the BP. So behind the scenes we went, and he opened up the temporary set-up. I picked her up and was examining her pretty closely. She was such a sweet little snake. But small.

Then it happened. As I was scrutanizing her mouth, nose and eyes for any signs of damage or mites... I felt something on my hand. Then another thing. And another.

I look at my hands and there are half a dozen full grown mites crawling on me.

..... I didn't drop the snake. In fact, I put her down quite nicely before I proceeded to grab and squish every single mite that was on me (to avoid waving my arms and hurling them to god knows where). I checked and checked the rest of my arms. Asked my friend to check and make sure I hadn't missed anything. Then I proceeded to do the girly 'shake it off-get it off me' dance just a bit.

After I regained composure, I calmly informed the employee that we would be buying none of their animals and that the manager needed to come speak to me now.

Long story short, she got a full refund without hesitation. I asked them what they planned to do about the mite problem, and the manager calmly replied: "Oh it's okay, we have Nix. We'll get it resolved here shortly." The way she was so casual about it was such a huge red flag. This python was amongst easily a dozen other snakes on the same shelf in the back room, all with substrate. I highly, highly doubt that they will treat it effectively. I asked about the animals on display, and was told: "They haven't been exposed to her, so they're okay."



Upon coming home, I went to the backyard, undressed in my yard (Hahaha), threw my clothes in a plastic bag then directly into the washing machine, and then jumped into the shower myself.

I've never felt 'grossed out' by bugs before. But that? That was just too much. Yuck!