SirenSanJose
aka: dheideman
As a pet store owner myself, I know that this is ILLEGAL. Yes, in the wild, they won't see water for days. In captivity, it is legally considered animal abuse to fail to provide sufficient food, fresh clean water, and shelter to any animal in your possession at any time.
I know stores that have had gorgeous, perfect uro set-ups, healthy, thriving animals that were clearly getting all their moisture from their greens and hay -- and got cited or warned for not having a water dish in the enclosure. This was legally correctable by supplying fresh drinking water at all times, even though of course the uros never touched it and kept getting the water from their diet. This is federal law at play here.
It is, also, by the way, entirely illegal to display visibly sick, injured, ill, or dying animals. A rescue in a fragile medical condition should NEVER be visible to the public. How much extra stress is that poor critter going to have out on the sales floor, with kids banging on it, people walking by, extra light, noise, and chaos? It should have been somewhere quiet and away from traffic.
It is also required by law to maintain a distinct QT room singly devoted to that purpose, by the way -- a multi-use room like a bathroom doesn't cut it. And if your sickroom is already that full, why? What are you doing wrong that you have so many ailing animals? And if the argument is 'they're fresh stock that came in, not sick stuff", why are you buying MORE animals when you don't have enough space to properly display and care for what you've got? What if you had a URI on your sales floor and needed to move other animals out to treat, but you've got no available room? That's certainly not Ok, legally or morally.
