Petco process to purchase feeder rats is insane.

[Argentum]

I'm not surprised that they gave you the runaround. I surprised they sold them to you at all. If it became widely known that they sell live animals as feeders, the backlash from the animal rights crowd would cost them much more than they make from selling feeders to us.

This. None of the PetsMart or PetCo stores around here sell live without a written guarantee that you won't use them as feeders, including a copy of your ID. Same in the last place I lived. Fortunately, I was able to find a nice supplier not too terribly far away in both locations, who commercially breeds feeder rodents. Another nice feature of the one here is that they also sell for falconry supply and wild raptor rehabilitation (The latter is different; There can't be any human odor on the rodents, so it's a more convoluted process, since the birds are being released back into the wild once they recover). Not that I'm a falconer. I'll stick to admiring other people's birds, when it comes to that. Me... I just have tiny chickens. (Chickens are small dinosaurs. They eat ANYTHING, including hatchling cobras. Which I don't have here.)