• Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

  • IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!! About the Google Adsense ads being displayed

    =====================
    Posted 08/15/2025
    =====================


    Yeah, I know. They are a pain in the butt. But they pay the bills to keep my server running. Just a fact of life, I am afraid.

    Want to get rid of them? Simple. Just become a Contributor level member or above and they will be gone. -> Please click HERE."

    Is that too much for me to ask of you to keep this site running? Well, sorry about that. I too wish I could get everything for free. But alas.....

    =====================
    Addendum: 01/10/2026
    =====================


    Google Adsense ad revenue for December, 2025 was just $30 over the cost of the lease for the server running this site. So, in effect, the money providing the incentive for me to continue running this site is coming SOLELY from the paid memberships and sponsorships here. Which honestly ain't much....

Petsmart - Not very good with Geckos

i worked for my local petco for a few months. there are good things about it (the employees! most, anyway...) and bad (managers & corporate people).

some of the employees are quite excellent, have many years experience, and are not afraid to tell customers facts. i've seen many (i mean many!) angry people yell to the managers about one of us refusing to sell an animal to them for any number of reasons. the reptile/aquatics specialist (yeah, lump those two together...) has called the county on the store before, and probably will again... humidity requiring animals don't belong on that alfalfa pellet bedding (that stuff grows mold in about 10 minutes!), but tell that to management. if you try to change it or even say anything, you get told that the corporate "specialist" said that's the way it is supposed to be... willfull management ignorance. then again on off days, people can walk out of there with an iguana, a 20L, and a heat rock. or cedar bedding for a snake. i've sent people back from the register (yeah, my reptile knowledge rated me a spot on the register... different complaint altogether...) who tried to buy the nice little bags of cedar chips with pictures of hamsters on them... what kind of advertising is that?!?!?

a quick note on pricing: the w/c ball pythons that normally sold for 59.99 for the longest time all of a sudden went on a mysterious post christmas sale price of... 59.99, but marked as regularly priced at 79.99!!! then when the 'sale' went off, they were all of a sudden actually priced at 79.99!!! for wild caught ball python babies!! (half of which were regularly refusing to feed...).

and the lack of vet care is true. they wouldn't spend the $$ or employee time to care for obviously ill animals...

that petco is, however, the only place in the area that's even close to 'ethical'... very sad.

there is a local pet store up the block, but they are super shady. the manager has been fired & rehired for stealing (!!!!), they house incompatible species, over price etc.

the uncle bills down the street is horrible. their reptiles only get cared for on days the 'reptile guy' is there, which is apparently about every third day. they had an emerald in a very ventilated vision, temp showing 79, with no water available!!!! (he was already blowing bubbles....) i called them out on that, but not much of a reaction... and if you do call anyone about it, 'we'll check into it' is the best you can hope for... after all, snakes aren't "cute & cuddly"...



ok, that's probably enough for now. sorry about the length of my rant.
 
Try buying from them!

I bought an albino male leopard gecko from them and he was already very skinny but I figured it was just from them not feeding enough and figured he would eat when i got him home. I bought him for 90 dollars and took him back home set him up in a good cage. He ate one cricket right when we got him back and then about a week later we had the huge ice storm in NC which knocked out our power. We brought all my geckos to my dads office and all of them were fine except he still would not eat. After the storm (about two weeks after I bought him), I returned to the store and told them that he would not eat and I wanted a refund. They took him in the back and claimed that he ate for them and I asked how they did it and they said "Force fed it...we pried its mouth open and stuck a cricket in, its not the best thing to do, but it shows hell eat." Of course it will eat if its forced. It also never "pooped" while I had him, showing he had never eaten very much to begin with. They took him back and gave me 90 dollar store credit. About two weeks later I returned and he was gone, I wonder what happened? They now have a very cute R. Auriculatus that is very cool looking but now I am afraid to buy animals from them ever again. It may just be one bad experience, but it's enough for me.
 
Monte if you think that Petsmart is bad, the one in Maplewood is 1000% times worse. They actually called the cops on my boyfriend because he was voicing his opinions about their reptiles. It was horrible, they had veilds in with jacksons, bearded dragons that were so skinny and they were missing limbs. We were not going to say anything till we saw a worker selling an iguana to a woman and saying something along the lines of "Its a great pet for a 8 year old kid, these don't get really big, and they stay really tame." Thats when my BF had enough, and just strolled up and started telling the woman that iguanas are not a great pet for an 8 year old, and just kind of explained to her that she might consider buying something else. The salesman at this point just started yelling, calling my bf a "hippy treehugging faggot" in front of the customer none the less. And with in 5 minutes the cops were there.

Petco in Maplewood is a few steps up from the Petsmart, there used to be a GREAT shop called Fins and More owned by Joe and Kim, they had great animals and took great care of them. Anyways I am climbing off my soapbox.
 
Back
Top