Irresponsible Petsmart...like always

[Eric Alan]

[SOAPBOX]

I'm completely confused by your post. It is a retailer's job to provide proper basic care for a short period of time while the animal is in their store. Nothing in this post suggests they were doing otherwise - you said nothing about the health of the animals other than being cramped.

I'm not sure how much tarantula experience you have, or how large your palm is for that matter, but I'd much rather see a rose hair being kept in a mini Kritter Keeper in a pet store than a too tall ExoTerra/ZooMed terrarium where it was prone to falling from the ceiling. To further the point, most tarantula breeder's collections are kept in containers that many people unfamiliar with the hobby would consider to be too small for them, but they are obviously thriving with proper care and maintenance. Also, you never said how large the fancy corn snake was that you were so upset by seeing in a mini Kritter Keeper. The ones I've seen being kept in this size are no bigger round than a pencil and are proportionally comparable to keeping hatchling BPs in shoe box sized racks - obviously nothing wrong with that. I also second the post that Mephibosheth1 made about Reptile Expos - the animals are obviously kept for short periods of time in enclosures that obviously don't meet their husbandry requirements. Compared with these expos, the display that you were so put off by at Petsmart is a resort - complete with free heat, food, and water!

I'm also not sure why you were so put off by the experience you had in the check-out line. PetSmart has a return policy on any animal they sell (for any reason - health or otherwise) because they understand that things happen in the real world once the new pet arrives home. It's the associate's job to provide basic care information - not give them the encyclopedic knowledge that you seem to think it takes to care for a snake or give them a real world snake keeping preview. That's what these forums are for!

Also, would you rather a cashier screw up a transaction at the cash register, or ask for help when needed? It also sounds like they also opened up another register so you won't have to wait as long behind the family you were getting impatient with. What horrible service!

What really gets me though is that you were the one pouring fuel on the fire with the family you encountered and weren't by any stretch of the imagination being a good ambassador for the hobby. I mean, seriously - an anaconda ate your father? Who says that to a stranger's child? Obviously, the family had some interest in bringing an unusual pet into their home, decided it wasn't for them, and you enforced their declining feelings towards our hobby and the type of person they now feel owns snakes.

[/SOAPBOX]

Eric