Quote Originally Posted by mcavana View Post
You are missing the point completely. You should not just contact the police or the DEC just because you spot dirty cages, or even a dirty house and you want them to be checked out... ESPECIALLY when reptiles are involved.

I understand there are mamals involved to, but since this is a ball python forum, I will talk about the reptiles.

In a lot of places there are no clear cut rules about keeping reptiles. If the investigating officer determins based on his own opinion that the person has too many animals, or that they aren't being kept right, there are a lot of BAD things they can do... including attempting to take the animals away from their keepers!!!!

The way I see it you have 3 options:

1.) mind your own business and do nothing
2.) offer to help get things cleaned up and set up to what you see as correct.
3.) tell them that they need to fix things or you are going to report it... then give them a reasonable amount of time to fix things.

If you tell them to fix things, and they don't... then you can consider calling the authorities.
Yea, it is a ball python forum - but as you can see this is in the off topic section.

Also, as I pointed out - one of my major concerns was the state of his house where his kids live and there is not one reptile located at his house.

As for there being several ways and differing opinions on how to house reptiles - is there one reptile owner here that will argue that you don't need to clean poop out of their tanks? How often does a snake poop that they aren't cleaning it out? How often do they shed - that ball python had old poop and 2 different sheds in its tank. Will people argue that snakes don't need access to clean water?

I have repeatedly said that I would talk to them. As for correcting them - the reptiles and their husbandry is a small part. At his house, full of feces and urine, do you think he thinks that is normal prodcedure for having pets? And it goes beyond housing - these dogs, cats and pot belly pigs - how much time is he spending with them? I work at two local animal shelters that just have dogs and cats, so I'm not completely unaware of what kind of damage that is done to animals that are not played with, are not petted or have time spent with them. When you do this they are just property - just something to collect. The dogs and cats don't even have names and these are supposed to be his pets.

I'm not saying these people don't care about their animals, but that isn't enough. If I have a dog and I don't feed him because I can't afford it even though I care for it or I don't have time the result is the same as it would be if I didn't feed him because I just didn't care. I only have 3 pets - two mice and a snake - I would love to have more pets but I acknowledge that I don't have time for more between my job, the (other) shelters I volunteer at and my little brothers, and that I couldn't give them the time that they need, so I don't pick up more animals. People need to be able to recognize that.