Pity pickups?

[anwhit]

Prep your mad fingers!!

I've never been in Petco or Petsmart (the only two chain stores I know of around here) and seen an adult ball python, or adult anything else for that matter. They all look like crap, yes, but they're always babies. I'm by no means a ball python expert, but I've read a ton of stories on here about people who've rescued snakes of all breeds, sizes, and ages that have been in less-than-ideal all the way up to damn-near-dead condition and a lot of these snakes have been turned around, some in pretty short periods of time, after a little proper care.

My point is that even though pet store animals aren't usually in perfect condition, they aren't usually beyond help either. Does Petco off them when they get to a certain age? Send them back to where they came from? Or are they kept until they're sold? If they don't "dispose" of them at any point prior to a sale, then the snakes will be fine. If you don't buy it, someone else will. Will it be someone who's going to take excellent care of it? Maybe, maybe not. But that really goes for any pet regardless of where it comes from.

From what I've read, they're resilient little things and can last for quite awhile without proper care, and can fairly easily bounce back once mistakes have been corrected. I'd guess that most of the pets that are purchased from stores like these get to a new home, with people who give the animal proper and personalized attention, and they do just fine. It's sad that they live the way they do while they're waiting, but that "home" really is just temporary.

You can make yourself crazy worrying about things like this, best case scenario. Worst case, you end up on Hoarders

I can actually provide a little input here because when I was looking around I got very close to the employees at my local petco.

Let me first start off by saying that every store is different, and this is because this responsibility falls into the hands of the hiring manager. You can either hire a reptile specialist and pay them more, or get a high school student and pay them minimum wage. (Of course, I feel as though petco needs to have this required of their animal care associates just like they do their fish experts, but well, that's another argument).

Luckily, the petco near me does thing right. I have met two out of the three people they hired to take care of their reptiles and both of them have experience. (One was an ex-breeder).

Now, I'm not sure if this is how every petco works, but this is what they told me. Once a reptile grows too big for it's enclosure in the store, they put it up for adoption at half price, (sometimes 75% off), at one of their adoption days. (At mine, they have a separate adoption day for small critters.) What they do if they don't get adopted, I don't know, but that is what I do know.

That being said, I don't think refusing to buy live animals from chain stores is a solution to the problem, I just don't see it that way. But that's my view and I definitely see why people would refuse. (There are so many horror stories all over the internet.)

I'm just glad that I live near a store that's responsible.