Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My mother had taken her weekly trip around all the Pet Shops in the area just looking at all of the animals and such, while also buying me some crickets. She stopped in at PetCo in Mesquite, Texas just to look around and buy some crickets and what not. Anyhow, there was this emaciated leopard gecko there (This was Tuesday). It was full grown (although hard to tell as it's tail was pencil thin and his body had absolutely no weight on it at all) and it propped itself up on it's forelimbs on the water bowl, with it's nose just dangling above the water.

My mom tried to find a manager or one of the reptile specialists but no one was there except for some young (compared to my mom, not me, lol) girl who ran the cash register and she didn't know very much about them at all. So my mom stormed off and came home and told me she was going to E-mail the corporate office and call the vet that handled PetCo in my area and a list of all these other things. Then I brought it to her attention that obviously PetCo didn't give a [bleep], or they'd had done something long before.

So today (Thursday) we went back up there to see if we could find a Vet's name listed above one of the enclosurers because we figured that the animal had already been taken out of the enclosure. NOPE! The gecko was in the SAME position as it was on Tuesday, when my mom had seen it. THE MOST EMACIATED ANIMAL I HAD EVER SEEN! And they still had it in the tank FOR SALE! How unprofessional can one place get!?

We found the manager and my mom told him that we have a few geckos and what not, and that they are NOT supposed to look like that. And that we presummed that the animal was dead. Infact, he shook the cage and the Gecko winced a little. And so he stuck his hand in there and the animal ran around a little, and I was telling him that because of the way they have their tanks set up, that if the animal had anything (i.e. crypto), that it would be given to the babies that were seperated by a little piece of plastic grating. We then told him that we had seen one of the babies trying to get to the other tank a month or so before hand, and that one of the "Specialists" (I use that term loosely for these guys) told us that there was NO WAY that the babies could get into the tank with the bigger adults. The manager tried to assure us that there was no way that the babies could get into it. Then her lifted up a piece of wood that the emaciated gecko ran under and guess what! There was a baby in the same tank as the adult animal! And guess what the manager did!!! He just threw the baby into the tank with about 20 other small leopard geckos. HE JUST PUT IT BACK! So if that sick animal did have crypto, he just infected the entire tank of babies. And they are going to be sold to unknowning beginnning herpers, and it is going to kill the babies. And the chain starts over from there.

I would chalk this visit up to the amazingly unintelligent specialists at the PetCo stores. I urge everyone to never buy an animal from any of the large-chain stores. Support the individual. Support the small-man. Buy ALL of your animals (be it a gecko or a dog) from reputable breeders. Do not support this kind of inhumane treatment.

That's all.....
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4.7.0 Leopard Geckos
2.1.0 Chihuahuas
2.1.0 Rottweiler Mix
1.0.0 Siamese Cat
1.0.0 Dwarf Hamsters

Josh
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That is exactly the way i feel(about buying from well known breeders and not retail stores). That story is by far the worst i have read in the whole time i have been interested in geckos...every time that i go to petco(to get an emergency like 100 count worms or something) THE BABIES ALL HAVE UNSHED SKIN THAT THE PEOPLE THERE JUST DON'T GIVE A SHIZ ABOUT. I mean there is one Gecko there that i have seen that has unshed skin all over its head and the eyes are sealed shut on it. All the grown geckos are emaciated(not to what you saw though) and every other lizard is just bad lookiong. Its just sad and please, please all the beginners and people on this forum. Buy from breeders and REAL specialist!

Thanks you,
Eric W.
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Dog-Molly
3 great female Leo's-Doory, Floe, and Darla

I swear that is just sick there needs to be something done about this problem or maybe the personel should be hired according to how much they know or how much they give a crap. I mean this just makes me sick. This is why there need to be people that are availible I bet they would take volunteers or workers which i think would be a good way to help those poor malnurished abused creatures urrrrr!!!

It is unfortunante. There is two Petcos in my area - one that is large. The geckos there - and the animals in general - look fat, happy, and healthy. The employees knew exactly what they were talking about. There is also a smaller Petco where their geckos are undernourished, and one employee even thought that a paternless hadn't grown it's spots yet!! Unfortuantly, if we support one, we support them all.

Sometimes it's not even the big corporate pet stores that treat their animals heinously. The store I bought my first geckos from was a local reptile specialty shop that houses the herpetological society meeting every month, and that several local vets have referred me to for information on feeding, care, etc. (Little did they realize that I was calling in regards to fatally sick animals that he had sold me!)

Imagine this: crypto in a reptile specialty shop. My babies were housed with a baby bearded dragon and a skink, on sand ...(and yes, I did loads of research even! The two major problems I had with his geckos were controversial issues--substrate and housing with other species--and I wanted to trust a store that the herp society met monthly at! He told me that the babies were very, very young, so I attributed their thin tails to having just recently hatched. It turned out that they were two months old, and they only weighed 2 or 3 grams!!)... The assholes keeping the store DIDN'T wash their hands between handling animals. I bet each and every animal in that shop has crypto.

He basically accused me of lying when I informed him that it was known offically that he had sold me animals with crypto. And has he done anything since then? No. His store is still open, and the herp society still meets there. PLUS he pet sits reptiles in his store while their owners are away!

How scary is that? I've done everything I can legally to shut down the store, but every time I drive the open sign is lit up. Government works so slowly...It's tempting to persuade people not to buy animals from pet shops period!