The Search for Good Petstores Continues- Today's Pets (long)

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Posted by girlzilla on April 14, 2003 at 08:26:44:

I went to a new store in the Annapolis mall last week- it's called Today's Pet. I went there after visiting a similar store in a mall in the Philly suburbs. There was no reptile section at that one, although they did sell supplies. Good so far, so I thought I would give my local mall petstore a try.

I grabbed a sales circular, and went to the tanks at the way back of the store (weird, that's where the herps are always kept in these bad stores- maybe indicates priority? Maybe we need a Rosa Parks of herps!) and was pleased with what I saw. There seemed to be one of every animal in each tank (except for the tiny ones, like anoles and leopard geckos), and they were priced in an appropriately high range- a monitor was over $150, as was a turtle and a chameleon.

Then I saw the iguana tank. Okay, I thought, not so bad. There seem to be only two fairly healthy looking iguanas here. Then I saw that there were TWO iguana tanks: One with only a few in it, rather wan and sickly looking ones, but still the healthiest of the bunch. That tank is on the eye-level shelf. If you look on the lowest shelf, you'll find another tank- full of the ones who aren't going to make it. It just broke my heart. They were skinny and brown, even though they had a bluish light shining on them to make them look good.

I looked back in the top tank- I had been wrong. There weren't two in there, there were only two basking on top of a log. The rest, and there were a lot, were under the log, piled together (for warmth, I assume) and they all had their eyes closed.

I stared at them for a while. There was nobody but me in the darkened "reptile cave" in the back of the store. As I looked at them, I tried to think to them how sorry I was that they were in the place they were. And then, something really weird happened. Maybe they noticed that something was staring at them, or maybe I made some little noise I wasn't aware of. But almost in unison, they all opened their eyes, and looked right at me, although they stayed perfectly motionless except for the eyes. It still gives me goosebumps to write about it.

I turned around and walked out of the store, dropping off the sales flyer at the register on the way. Oh, incidentally- Almost every animal in that cluster of tanks was over fifty dollars. All herps were twenty percent off that week- making the price of an iguana something like ten dollars. Sickening.

Follow Ups:

Re: The Search for Good Petstores Continues- Today's Pets (long) BeDreamin 04/14/03 (2)
- WOW! What's it called? girlzilla 04/15/03 (1)
  - Re: WOW! What's it called? griffinej5 04/16/03 (0)
Re: The Search for Good Petstores Continues- Today's Pets (long) Samcin 04/14/03 (0)