hi guys, i've been a member for a while but I am something of a lurker. My husband and I are big suckers for lizards. We already have two beardies, a Jackson's Chamelion, and a juvenile green iguana, and I keep two leopard geckos and a ball python in my classroom. We like to take our beardies out so we visit the pet stores in town whether we need something or not. Today we went to a store that we rarely visit because the quality of their animals has not been maintained since they opened this summer.
I was horrified by what i saw in the reptile area. first, they kept all of their reptiles in a tower with no uvb bulbs, and everything is kept on reptibark that looks like it never gets cleaned. They had two juvenile beardies housed together. one was significantly larger than the other, and in pretty good shape. The other one broke my heart.
He was missing one front leg from the elbow down, and all of the toes from the other front foot. He had some open sores across the tip of his nose where the other had bitten him, an under bite, and swelling around his nostrils. He was skinny to the point of emaciation. I suddenly felt sick, and asked my husband to take me home. On the way out I told him that if I ever suggested coming back to the store to tell me no because I always saw something that upset me. As we were pulling into our driveway I looked over at him and asked if he would kill me if I got another beardie. He said that he was thinking that he didn't want to leave the poor little bugger there suffering.
I called my sister, who is also my reptile vet, and asked if she thought that her boss would let her treat it as rescue pro bono if I could convince the manager to let me have it at cost. She told me that if not, she'd work on him. I called the store back and asked to speak to the manager, and basically let him have it for the poor living conditions that all of the reptiles were kept in, and pointed out that such an obviously injured animal would never sell at the $90 price that they were asking for it when healthy beardies are sold all over town for less than $50. I asked if he would sell him to me at cost. He said that he couldn't do that, but that he could sell it for half price.
When we went back to the store to collect him, we took out largest beardie, Eddie. The clerk who got him out of the tank for us, told us that he'd been missing one foot when he got to the store, but that the other had bitten off the missing toes, and ate most of the food that went into the tank, and that this one was "sweet" and that he was glad that it was goign to a good home. I had to bite my tongue to keep from asking why, if they knew that this was happening, they hadn't separated the two dragons. When the manager checked us out, he asked me what I fed Eddie, and gave me a 7 day warranty on the lizard. Again, I bit my tongue and gave him a pretty detailed account of a popper diet for bearded dragons.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ravelinjasara/8065001058/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ravelinjasara/8065001826/
Lucky has been to the vet, who thinks that he has a pretty good chance, as he is pretty alert for being as skinny as he is. he's getting baths in diluted chlorohexadine solution, and I am dusting his crickets in carnivore care and calcium to try to get some weight on him.
apologies - I can't make the embedded image links work.
I was horrified by what i saw in the reptile area. first, they kept all of their reptiles in a tower with no uvb bulbs, and everything is kept on reptibark that looks like it never gets cleaned. They had two juvenile beardies housed together. one was significantly larger than the other, and in pretty good shape. The other one broke my heart.
He was missing one front leg from the elbow down, and all of the toes from the other front foot. He had some open sores across the tip of his nose where the other had bitten him, an under bite, and swelling around his nostrils. He was skinny to the point of emaciation. I suddenly felt sick, and asked my husband to take me home. On the way out I told him that if I ever suggested coming back to the store to tell me no because I always saw something that upset me. As we were pulling into our driveway I looked over at him and asked if he would kill me if I got another beardie. He said that he was thinking that he didn't want to leave the poor little bugger there suffering.
I called my sister, who is also my reptile vet, and asked if she thought that her boss would let her treat it as rescue pro bono if I could convince the manager to let me have it at cost. She told me that if not, she'd work on him. I called the store back and asked to speak to the manager, and basically let him have it for the poor living conditions that all of the reptiles were kept in, and pointed out that such an obviously injured animal would never sell at the $90 price that they were asking for it when healthy beardies are sold all over town for less than $50. I asked if he would sell him to me at cost. He said that he couldn't do that, but that he could sell it for half price.
When we went back to the store to collect him, we took out largest beardie, Eddie. The clerk who got him out of the tank for us, told us that he'd been missing one foot when he got to the store, but that the other had bitten off the missing toes, and ate most of the food that went into the tank, and that this one was "sweet" and that he was glad that it was goign to a good home. I had to bite my tongue to keep from asking why, if they knew that this was happening, they hadn't separated the two dragons. When the manager checked us out, he asked me what I fed Eddie, and gave me a 7 day warranty on the lizard. Again, I bit my tongue and gave him a pretty detailed account of a popper diet for bearded dragons.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ravelinjasara/8065001058/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ravelinjasara/8065001826/
Lucky has been to the vet, who thinks that he has a pretty good chance, as he is pretty alert for being as skinny as he is. he's getting baths in diluted chlorohexadine solution, and I am dusting his crickets in carnivore care and calcium to try to get some weight on him.
apologies - I can't make the embedded image links work.
I'm glad you took him in
