Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have to rant a bit about something i saw the other day. To brief you there is a new pet store in town. I loved it at first, great food selection, lots of live feeders... then one day a guy who was working there was showing me the lizards they had (very impressive stock) b/c he knew i was getting something new soon, and he worked at the other pet store and so knwos how much $ i spend on my pets monthly... Needless to say i'm a good customer to have lol. Anyway his dink of a manager thought he was hitting on me, called him over mid conversation and told him to go sweep the other half of the store. Then left me alone there. GREAT customer service, let me tell ya. I was po'd needlesss to say. LAter that day i was in again, and asked the same dink if he was hiring. His response "we have a WAITING list to work here, sorry". Last i thought you checked resmes and picked the person most QUALIFIED for the job... Stupid bugger... Needless to say i never went there again..... until the other dya. I ran out of little crix and the other store had none in for a week or two, and i didn't want to drive to hamilton to get them, so i went to the stupid dinks store (that's his nickname now... quite fitting i assure you) and got a box of 1/4" crix. They had TWO pairs of veileds AND a pair of FLAPNECKS IN THE SAME F*CKING TANK!!! how retarted is that. They looked miserable. Except the one largest veiled. He looked like a freaking king... go figure. They also had what i think was a fisher's (amazingly beautiful... moreso in real life than any pics i've seen even) in a tank maybe 3' tall or less by 1.5'. He was pawing at the glass and pacing around. broke my heart. I told hte guy in that dept working (not the manager just an employee) and he said he'd let them know but didn't seem to give two sh!ts when i told him that's like keeping a pitbull with a jack russle. WHO'S GONNA GET THE FOOD?!?!?!?! Duh.
One of the flapnecks had it's one eye clsoed and was VERY skinny. His/her ribs were poking out and by its pelvis was sunken in, and it's tail was very thin. The large cham in the other tank was also thin.
I'm going tokeep an eye on them and if it gets really bad i'm going to tt the spca here and see if there's anything I can do. If not i'm going to write something for the paper about "general" mistreated animals in pet stores or smoething like that. Maybe lizards in particular... then when people see them they will KNOW that it's wrong!! (sure maybe not all will care, but it may smarten up the store a bit to at least give DECENT care before a sale... i know the limits of their space, but they shoudl have at least basic care.. also exotics tend to move slower than hampsters for example, and well if theya re going to be there a few weeks or more that's just aweful!!!)
I need to get a big stick and just SMACK that manager into reality...i wish i could
-----
~Lindsay
0.1 panther chameleon (Orion)
1.2 r. brevicaudatus chams (unnamed)
0.1 leopard gecko (Acadia)
1.0 pictus gecko (Raine)
1.1 parakeets (Bongo/Citron)
1.1 cats (Tigger/Bonzai)
1.0 dwarf hampster (Chico the monster)
someday will have 1.1 great danes (will be Osiris and Solaris)

Do what I did when I discovered my local petstore was being abusive to chams. I spent a day researching the Chams they had (2 veiled, a graceful an a pgmy!) And printed out a book which included:

1:Care sheets on all 3 species
2:A list of websights (Including this one) with care on chameleons
3:A list of the most important thing you can have for these chams (The esentials)
4ictures of various enclosures for chams
5:A list of books about care of Chams (LOL They had the books in the store)
6:A safe plant list
7:A memo stating that I would call animal services if this sort of action continued against these creatures.

What they had was the 2 veileds in one tank (Both male, both fullgrown) which was about 20"wide, 30"tall and 15" deep or something around that. Crickets jumping everywhere (Some dead in a WATER BOWL!) I was at the store for a while (Like 3 hours lol, looking at stuff) and I didn't see them spray the cage ONCE, even though it was obviously dry. There was no UVA/B Bulb there (apperently the guy who sold the chams to them, said they don't need it) and like 2 branches, some sort of bark as a substrate (I saw a cham almost eat a large plastic piece) and some more bad things.

The graceful was in a similar setup except slightly less wide, and les branches. He was extremely thirsty it looked (Pretty sunken in eyes) and about the same conditions as the veileds.

The pygmy they had in one of those critter keepers. No substrate, place looked dry as hell, like 3 fake branches for climbing. A basking bulb right in the center (I think both sides had the sam temps) and crackits Which wern't even pinheads (The smallest crickets they had at the stor mind you, which are good for say, a juvenile bearded dragon!)

Anyways I gave in the book and came in a week later. They had all there chams seperate now (good) in glass aquariums which had 2 screened sides (A little better) there was a spray ottle there (The tanks looked whet also). They still had a water bowl but it had an airpump and thats a small imporvement. There were no more crickets jumping around. The cages where much more full with various leaves and such. It was what I would consider a "Bare Minumum" Chameleon enclosure The pygmy was gone when I got there (Probably dead... )

Well, just take this course of action, you never know this dink could do something.

Also where are you around? I would love to check out his new petstore, see what its like (Still hav't gone to that one in hamilton, might go sometime next week)
-----
0.2 Cats (Moora and Twitch)
0.1 Dogs (Maria)
soon to be 1.0 Panther Chameleon (Yoda)

I think these are good ideas. You should go directly to "dink" and let him know how it is. Hey, maybe if he see that you know more than him, he'll hire you! Then you can "save" all the animals.

Related to animal caging, I was looking through member photos of cages and setups (on this site) and found a picture of a snake that made me very sad. Basicaly the cage was a plastic box with a clear front with one pole going across that the snake was perched on. It made me think of a turkey on a roasting rod... I don't know crap about snakes, but this was not even close to a naturalistic setup and the snake couldn't even stretch out all the way if she wanted to. The guy who posted the pic says it's easier to clean this way. I think if you want something easy to care for, get a betta, or even better, a pet rock. If you are going to keep a wild animal, give it something close to the habitat it's genes are selected for.

Anyhow, just my rant.
-----
~Melissa
1.0 Ambanja Panther (Diesel)
0.1 African Hegdehog (Kaimah)

Related to the snake in the box comment you posted...and in defense of snake keepers using plastic boxes....

I don't know crap about chameleons (see my post just a few down!), but I know a thing or two about snakes!

I'm guessing this was a GTP or chondro--or maybe a tree boa, if it was in a plastic box, with a plastic PVC type rod (or something similar) going across the box as a perch. This is a very common, perfectly acceptable and even preferred way to keep young GTPs and young tree boas...the plastic boxes make it easy to keep the humidity up, easy to regulate the heat for the youngsters and are easily adjustable to the size of the snake, not to mention easy to clean. Breeders in particular like to use this method, because they are easy to rig into a stacking system. Also, GTPs (the kind I have) often get very stressed as youngsters in enclosures that are very roomy. It is recommended that small GTPs be housed in small enclosures. I had my two babies in a sterlite box for a while, then moved them to a 10g aqaurium for a couple of months, then to a larger rubbermaid container, and now they're in a taller cage and what will be their home until they're quite a bit bigger. Plastic sterlite or rubbermaid boxes are the easiest, and cost effective way to do this! As for stretching out area, GTPs don't often stretch out...they live to hang "like a turkey on a baster"...it's what they do! They drop their heads to hunt and eat, and leave their perches to poop.

I'm sorry to go on in a chameleon forum about snakes, but I've seen many GTP and tree boa keepers get blasted for doing what they're supposed to be doing, because it seems wrong. It's not.

Gotta stick up for the snake keepers, after all, especially the dedicated chondro keepers out there. We folks are like you guys here...VERY SERIOUS about caring for our animals! And at $500-1000 a snake, no one takes their care for granted!

BTW, I'm learning a lot about chameleons on this site...you guys know your stuff!

Yes I believe it was a chondro. Like I said, I don't know anything about snakes so if that is how people keep them and they are kept successfully then all that matters is that they are healthy. She just looks like a poor lab rat though.
-----
~Melissa
1.0 Ambanja Panther (Diesel)
0.1 African Hegdehog (Kaimah)

I live in Brantford. It's pretty good for a regular pet store, decent selection of animals and products. The one in Hamilton is FREAKIN AMAZING!!!! I could easily spend (and have spent) hours each visit. it isn't very large, but they have animals floor to ceiling and they are VERY knowledgeable and care for their animals very well. I love it there.
Where do you live?
-----
~Lindsay
0.1 panther chameleon (Orion)
1.2 r. brevicaudatus chams (unnamed)
0.1 leopard gecko (Acadia)
1.0 pictus gecko (Raine)
1.1 parakeets (Bongo/Citron)
1.1 cats (Tigger/Bonzai)
1.0 dwarf hampster (Chico the monster)
someday will have 1.1 great danes (will be Osiris and Solaris)

I felt the same way about a store here in Halifax. Then they switched their reptile setup and keep their three or four veileds in a tank with substrate, water dish, fake plants only, and i took a look at the bulb and it said "PPHILLIPS" on it. PHILLIPS DOESNT MAKE $%&@ING UV BULBS SUITABLE FOR CHAMS!!!

They had a fischer's in there too. I saw him one day waiting at the edge of the glass looking very dark and sick. Another week later he was in the same spot, just sicker. Anyway he's since died from maltreatment. I feel bad for buying my first cham from them, despite the fact that he is a fantastic creature and was in good shape when i got him (i'll tell you why, he got in the store from the wholesaler in montreal hours before, he hadn't had a chance to get maltreated yet!).

Canada isn't very well educated about reptiles at all, i must say. I hope this changes very very soon.

I know it's too bad. I want to run a hobby shop or something like that when i'm older with lizards and birds.... I understand that stores don't make any money when putting up LARGE enclosures, and doing everything perfectly, but they should still provide the bare minimums. For example, in a home set up you wouldn't keep 20 budgies in a cage together (unless you are a jerk couple i was friends with... and since stopped being friends with b/c of how they treated their pets) but they at least have SOME space, and food and water. And i bet they wouldn't put that cage right in a freezing cold draft... basic knowledge. Unfortunately they don't even have the slightest basic knowledge of chams... i tried talking to the guy there but he seemed more annoyed by me than anything. I'm going to write a letter or email or something and include care sheets and pics of WHY you should care well for your chams... it isn't that difficult to give bare minimum care for them.
We'll see what happens... I still wish i could just smack him though lol.
-----
~Lindsay
0.1 panther chameleon (Orion)
1.2 r. brevicaudatus chams (unnamed)
0.1 leopard gecko (Acadia)
1.0 pictus gecko (Raine)
1.1 parakeets (Bongo/Citron)
1.1 cats (Tigger/Bonzai)
1.0 dwarf hampster (Chico the monster)
someday will have 1.1 great danes (will be Osiris and Solaris)

In reply to chimbakka, I live in richmond hill ONT. So the hamilton sotre is a fair amount away (like a hour there and back drive)

I would like to go though.
-----
0.2 Cats (Moora and Twitch)
0.1 Dogs (Maria)
soon to be 1.0 Panther Chameleon (Yoda)