Just the average Pet Store visit

wickella

wickella

New Member
Not too pleased atm.

Went to Petco, and saw a young family picking out a baby veiled chameleon. I was interested to see the babies, of course, so I lingered. I then heard them say that it was for their 4 year old daughter. The wife says "Hmm... that one seems shy, but I'm sure he'll get used to all the handing <insert daughters name here> will give him." This is when I covered my face with my palm.

The associate walked away to box up the cham, and I noticed the guy had some coconut bedding in his cart. So I approached him.
"Hey...Not trying to be all pushy, but that bedding is really not good for chameleons." He looked very indignant. "Why?" "Well you see, with their tongues and all, they can accidentally digest the bedding when they shoot for a cricket, and crickets can hide in that easier..." He looked very confused by this, since this is of course what the Petco associate recommended. :(
"Well, what do you suggest I use then?" He seemed pretty peeved, so I told him about paper towels or newspapers and he laughs and he says "I have a 50 gallon tank." "...What? Really? You have done NO research have you? They need a screened enclosure..." and he walked away at this point.

I feel bad, but in a way pretty proud. I wasn't giving that information to help -him-. I just wanted to help that baby cham live comfortably.

Needless to say, I was pretty infuriated on my drive home. :mad:
 
Similar thing happened to me xept with an employee lets leave it at that. The problem is cham's are to cool and people want them right away, I hate these pet store employees. (well most are bad, some good ones i must say)
 
You did all that you could. It takes guts to approach someone in a situation like that. Hopefully they will look into it on their own and realize they were in the wrong.
 
Haha thanks all!
Some young children have problems handling a guinea pig without squeezing it to death...so a chameleon makes perfect sense. :rolleyes:
 
Interesting that you posted this thread...because I too was at a Petco today and noticed a veiled chameleon for sale. They had it stuck in a tiny glass aquarium with the windows all fogged up from moisture. The poor little guy was sitting hugged up against the glass looking out at me. The Petco lady came by and said, "Do you want to hold him?" I said, "No, they really shouldn't be handled too much." She told me that he's the only friendly chameleon they ever had, all the others always hissed at them when people tried to play with them.

To make matters worse, I then went to the local reptile "experts" in St. Paul, Twin Cities Reptiles. I expected professionals here but what I found was worse then Petco. They had chameleons stuffed into small glass aquariums on the floor under all the other aquariums. There was no ventilation at all and no proper lighting. One of the chameleons was completely black, his entire body, no other color showing, just pitch black.

I wanted to rescue all of them.
 
oh mzan just wait, you will see them in a week or two and they will have that same box, it will be the dead chameleon. At that point you tell them they should have listened to you and it is in fact THEIR fault the chameleon died.
 
wickella said:
Not too pleased atm.

Went to Petco, and saw a young family picking out a baby veiled chameleon. I was interested to see the babies, of course, so I lingered. I then heard them say that it was for their 4 year old daughter. The wife says "Hmm... that one seems shy, but I'm sure he'll get used to all the handing <insert daughters name here> will give him." This is when I covered my face with my palm.

The associate walked away to box up the cham, and I noticed the guy had some coconut bedding in his cart. So I approached him.
"Hey...Not trying to be all pushy, but that bedding is really not good for chameleons." He looked very indignant. "Why?" "Well you see, with their tongues and all, they can accidentally digest the bedding when they shoot for a cricket, and crickets can hide in that easier..." He looked very confused by this, since this is of course what the Petco associate recommended. :(
"Well, what do you suggest I use then?" He seemed pretty peeved, so I told him about paper towels or newspapers and he laughs and he says "I have a 50 gallon tank." "...What? Really? You have done NO research have you? They need a screened enclosure..." and he walked away at this point.

I feel bad, but in a way pretty proud. I wasn't giving that information to help -him-. I just wanted to help that baby cham live comfortably.

Needless to say, I was pretty infuriated on my drive home. :mad:
Click to expand...

This is horrible that they have horrible caring advice and they dont take care of their advice. Im thinking of calling the Petco and Petsmart because i know both do the same things and its not just in your state but in FL to i cant stand to see the animals we live for in conditions like this. Im goign to call the Petco and Petsmrt headquarters or the place controls all stores and tell them what needs to be done because we need to put a end to this nonsense. I agree you did the best you can and the idiot still didn't listen to you. Unbelievable
 
First off, good job. I feel like doing the same think when I see people taking leopard geckos with a bag of calcisand. But the worst part is when you're talking to an employee and they actually OWN the species they're taking such poor care off. And as you talk to them you realize that their own pets must be in an equally poor condition.

I've heard that all these chains are starting to switch (FINALLY) all their leos from sand to carpet, which is a start. It seems that all the people who sent letters in and who called up headquarters were actually heard. I think that if everyone keeps talking to their local stores we might see changes take place.
 
Thats exactly what i was trying to say and i actually noticed they did that same things in petsmart. From sand to carpet :) it always use to be sand. When we walk into a pet shop and see something that upsets us, go tell an employee and make sure they change it to the right choice.
 
The employees at places like Petco and PetSmart can't change anything about how an animal is housed, it is dictated by corp. The only way we can change is to talk to managers and send mail to corp.

I reamed the manager at the Petco in Great Falls so many times he no longer carrys chams. Told corp they just don't sell in Montana. Now at least when I go in to get fruit fly cultures I don't have to see the poor pitiful little chams. It is a step, a small one but a step in the right direction.
 
Here is my rather rhetorical question-What IDIOT parents would spend like $119 on a lizard(that is what Petsmart marks the Veileds up to here) on a 4 year old?

I tend to be a Petsmart stalker. I was able to help one family that was buying a Jacksons-the Mom emailed me when I handed them my card and I helped them get the poor girl set up right-that was for a 17 year old.
 
i do love being in petstores hanging around the herp section, and sometimes ill linger for a while, and ill even go as far as to correct the petstore people. Just to show how uniformed they are.


i mean i tore into a manager infront of a customer, customer did thank me. like i said , id love to have cards for chameleonforums.com, with just that on the card with the URL so i could hand them out to would be buyers.


whats even sadder is when some of the employees know what they are doing wrong, and yet still don't do anything to change their set ups for the good. i guess if i worked at a petsmart/co id be fired fairly quickly for being an agitator.
 
Pet stores usually have ignorant teens working there and they never give accurate information to the customer. I went into a pet store and saw two baby veileds in a cage one was turning dark brown and I asked the employee what the matter was w/ it. She says "for some reason it will not eat", I was like no kidding they hate being housed together, and they hate glass. The one will eat if you put it in it's own enclosure. They also had water bowls for them to drink out of. So I explained how they like to drink drips off the leaves and such. They just thought I was dumb. I wont say their name but they do not deserve to be in business, doing this to poor animals.
 
Oh yeah I know what your talking about because, When I went to a small pet store around my area (at this point i didnt have any experience or research) but i saw a chameleon (luckily in a screen enclosure) but all he had was a limb, no leaves vines or any thing he looked fine , and thats what made me want a cham but when i went back a week later they said he died for some reason, thus drove me to find this forum! and now i have a 6 month veiled and he seem to be ok!:)

in other words thanks for every ones help
 
wow thats horrible :( when i got my cham, the employee at the "reptile store" (i dont go there anymore :mad:) dropped my cham :eek: and i kinda yelled " why did you do that?!" and he said " as long as they get up their fine" i was furious, so i bought the cham and left :mad: (he was the only male so i had to buy him, but hes doing great :D)
 
People just want to buy a pet and they don't get any info. of the animal and it will be cool for a month for the people then the animal will die.:mad::mad:
 
Whats next? Pet stores carrying Chameleons in little cricket keepers?....Oh wait, nevermind lol. ;)
 
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