Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I would like some advice on a local chain store that I visited today. This is actually where I bought my first Ball from about a year ago, mainly because I felt sorry for it and I had been researching balls for a couple of months. I had done my research before I made that purchase and thought that I would be fine, little did I know that the little girl I purchased had a RI. Well I took her to the vet long story short, everything turned out fine and now she is an 850 garbage disposal and I am glad that she got me started with Ball Pythons,....although now I can't stop.....anyway I went back to that store today for the first time in about eight months and much to my dismay they had about 15 hatchlings all housed in a 10 gal tank with no thermometer/hygrometer probably nothing more than the florescent light above the tank, one hide a bowl of old water and a fake plant. I wasn't suprised because this is the same place as I said that I bought my first BP from. Here comes the good part. I kindly asked the manager if the same pet care "specialist" that was there a year ago still worked at his store, at least she had a little bit of knowledge and did her best. He said no so I asked who was in charge of the snakes and expressed my concearns and offered to help out if he needed it. Then he went into some unjust rant about how he has kept snakes for longer than my 22 years of existence and how I didn't know what I was talking about. He said "sometimes BP's just won't eat." I told him why they weren't eating and why two of them would be blind in a month or two due to his apathy and/or lack of knowledge. I stayed calm the whole time, but he made me leave and told me there was no one above him that I could discuss my concerns with. What can I do in this situation? I can't seem to find a website for the place or a phone number. Could I deal with it locally, police, humane society etc...? I just hate to see animals neglected like I saw today and once they leave the store they will likely fall into inexperienced hands and die a long slow death........ I am very distressed about this so any advice on what I could do to help get those snakes proper care is very much appriciated.
-Bryce
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0.2 Normal Balls
adding more soon!

This is a situation that I think everyone at one time or another has encountered. Myself included. A local place by me is horrible. there is a baby there with a full body stuck shed for over 2 and a half months. I offered to soak it and help get the skin off. the set up is horrible and it strikes constantly(i am sure because it is way over stressed) they told me to mind my own bussiness unless I was buying the snake. I have already bought thee from there because of the same thing. I cannot buy everything because it is only making it worse. I live in pa and there is nowhere to go to get them help. I tried desperatly there is if it is a cat or dag nothing for reptiles.

Unfortunately this is a common problem with alot of pet shops. They operate on a profit focused business. Most ball pythons are imports and usually suffer from dehydration, stress,parasites,etc.Thats why most pet shops are bird, puppy, fish based. The best thing we can do for this industry is keep on breeding and offer captive raised hatchlings and educate the public on the difference. Most imports are shipped under very poor conditions with no regard to the animals health.I would venture to say that less than 50 percent survive the shipping process . I myself plan to add a rack with just normals to offer for sale when I launch my website.........Hopefully in the next year.We need to as a industry give back to these wonderful creatures that allow us to enjoy this hobby. The child today buying a $60.00 normal is tomorrows breeders!!!!!!!!

Don't buy from people who don't take good care of there animals. You buy one to try and save it from its sorry living conditions. While good intentioned you are. He will just buy more. He buys them for 15.00 and sells them for 70.00 . If a couple die he still makes money. If nobody buys them he won't ether. Sorry. Claude

Ok, I know what you are going through and have dealt with similar things. But, instead of buying the snakes, I just stood around and talked to people. I carried pictures of adult animals with people to show how big they get, kept spreadsheets with information about what upkeep will cost, and carried a receipt of a vet bill for 200 I got with my first snake that I bought from a petshop... (had a bad RI, scale rot, and mouth rot). This petshop was worse then just bad husbandry, however, they had a retic in a tank that said on the side "great pet! Stays small!" When they asked me if I needed help I simply told them I was looking and they couldn't do much. Once I was questioned by a cop, but after explaining that they were falsely advertising a snake that could very easily get to 25 feet long as "stays small" and that I wanted to show unaltered photos to other customers so they knew what they were buying. After this convo I never was bothered again, and the petshop eventually stopped buying retics, burms, iguanas, and monitors. They also got thermostats and hydrometers and kept track so they could "shove it in my face" when I walked in. At the end of the day they thought that they were hurting me by taking care of the animals, but by dealing with a little berating I was helping the animals and the consumers who were being tricked.
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1.0 100% het albino ball python
0.1 normal Ball python
0.0.1 uromastyx (Styx)...he is a rescue

Thanks for all of your support guys, I figured there wasn't really a lot that I could do. Although many of you have been here before it sill doesn't make it any easier to see animals treated so poorly . I don't think that I will try my hand at in store education of customers seeing as I was threatened to be reported to the police. I haven't found anyone locally that is interested in the mistreatment of snakes, just cat's and dogs.
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0.2 Normal Balls
adding more soon!