Ask The Guy Who Owned an Exotic Pet Store.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
81

Well like any business working with animals, you deal with poo. A lot of poo. In fact, at one point we had so much poo, we had to hire on a kid to deal with the poo. Snakes occasionally vomit when they are stressed, and the only thin worse than poo, is you guessed it, vomit.

You get bitten. A lot. For non venomous animals, it is important to handle them frequently so they get used to the idea. It makes them better pets, and eases the keepers duties when it’s time to clean up. While I was never bitten or stung by anything venomous, I can’t count the number of times I was bitten, chewed on, nipped, clawed, shat upon, or widdled on by any number of animals. Once I had a baby ball python mistake my thumb for his pink mouse and he tried to eat it for over an hour until he finally gave up. I got pinched by a giant hermit crab badly enough that it left a scar because he cut off the blood to the area long enough that the skin sloughed off. I was bitten by a 5 ft moray eel once as well. That hurt like the dickens. Hedgehogs have bacteria on their spines that makes your hand go numb and tingly, and the less dangerous bugs can still put a wallop on you. I have a permanent reaction to tarantula bristles now, from an OD on them thanks to a goliath bird eater. The Urticating bristles itched me for two weeks straight, and the only relief was scaling my chest and arms with hot water. Now, if it come into contact with a significant amount of them, my hands break out in little water blisters.

Outside of husbandry, you have to deal with all the crap of a small business as well. Suppliers, inventory, delivery issues, surly customers, and the like. The trade also gets periodic bad press resulting in PETA people annoying your customers and suspicious game officers trying really hard to trump up a charge so they don’t have to do something more strenuous.

82

What about veterinary care for some of these animals? Will a run-of-the-mill vet do for these exotics?

83

I just wanted to say that your writing is fantastic!

More stories please! :smiley:

84

Well, Fish are easy and can be medicated without a RX, Reptiles should be seen by a vet who has experience with them, and not any old vet. If you don’t have one, look up vets who treat small animals, or livestock, they are more accommodating about getting your the RX/s you might need. Exotic mammals that do not belong to the cat or rodent family should be seen by a qualified exotic specialist, their metabolisms are too diverse from those of domesticated animals. However, if you lack such a person in your area, take your pet to the vet ASAP if it needs care. Even an inexperienced vet will probably get it right for all the basics. Many people get around the problem by purchasing antibiotics and de-wormers and the like through livestock catalogs or at feed stores. Doing the numbers isn’t too difficult as it usually is done by weight. Always err on the low side dose-wise if you are not sure and provide plenty of clean water in case of loose stools.

I do reccomend that you look into available care for your pet before purchasing one, or familiarizing yourself with the basics that may come up. Many vets refuse to treat exotics, and some will call the authorities on you, causing you to have to produce your paperwork.

85

Has anyone ever been killed or injured by an exotic pet you sold to them?

86

Okay, how about “weird customer story”.

Hermione

As you can imagine, you meet a lot of interesting people working around exotic animals. Everyone is just a bit quirky but some really are far more memorable than the usual level of oddness.

I don’t know this girl’s real name. We always called her “Hermione” because she acted exactly like the character of the same appellation. She was about 14 years old, looked liked she was 9, had bright carrot orange poofy hair, and an attitude that you wouldn’t believe. Obviously a bright kid, she would come in each week to buy food items for her pets. She would also come into to argue with us about anything related to reptiles that you could imagine. I did NOTHING correctly in her opinion. She had read books, and the books did not always agree with how we did things.

It didn’t matter if it was the frequency of the misting on the chameleon habitat, or the choice of substrate in the snapping turtle pond, We didn’t do it by the book, and we were WRONG. She considered it her mission in life to help us poor wayward fellows get on the correct path.

Now before you think I’m going to tear a kid a new one, let me say that she took exemplary care of her animals. Seriously. They never wanted for anything and were as healthy, and well adjusted as any I ever came across. There are a lot of ways to house most species, and her method obviously got results.

So Hermione comes in and decides that she is going to add to her collection. She already had a few different type of lizards and has chosen to diversify in to snakes. She browses the small baby kingsnakes and colubrids for a while, all the time muttering to herself: “No, no, no…this is all wrong! Cal-kings should be on newspaper not Sani-fresh!..Why does that candy-cane corn have an anole in with him? He should be eating hoppers!”

Now I’m used to Hermione’s rants, and being the more sociable and patient of the staff, I always dealt with her. K. is a misanthrope that would make House jealous, so I dealt with most of the customers while he handled the more technical ends of things. After a while she stomps over to counter and produces a small spiral notepad. She tosses it to me and declares: “All this stuff is wrong you know. You should fix it, people might notice.” I glance at it. It’s all stuff that I could rebut in a second, but I decide that a little discipline is in order.

“So did you find anything that you want to take out over there?” I ask her.
“Nah…It’s all pretty nice, but I want something different.” She pronounces the word as if I’ve insulted her by recommending that she start with an easy snake. That’s alright, and evil plot is forming in my mind.
“Well I suppose you could go back to the import room and browse around.” I state, the plan now fully developed. “We keep the rarer stuff back there because it’s quiet and less stressful on the animals.” Her eyes gleam with officiousness.
“Can i take stuff out?”
“If you come and get me first. If K. is back there tell him I said it’s cool for you to be back there.”
“Okay.” She darts into the next room.

Now it ismortant to say at this point that everything I told her was true. We DO keep the rarer things back there, and we DO use it as a quiet room. What i failed to mention is that nearly everything else in that room was ill-tempered to physchotic in disposition. Biters, pissers, scratchers, shitters, anything that wasn’t of a neutral of friendly disposition lived in the quiet room and was brought out upon request, or if a guest couldn’t find a solution from the common stock.

Within a few moments I heard a Squee of delight. Hermione came darting back out and ran over to me, positively vibrating with excitement. “You guys have a Thunder ratsnake ?!” Score. I knew she couldn’t resist.

“Sure. We get them in every now and again, he’s mean though.”
“Oh it doesn’t matter! I’ve read all about them! You must not be handling him right, you can’t move fast around them.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. You didn’t know that?” The disdain poured off her words.
“I’d heard, but I don’t place much value in rumors, I like to evaluate each animal individually.”
“Oh.” She seems a bit disappointed that she can’t catch me here. “Can I hold him?”
“Are you serious? Let’s see your money.” She produces sufficient funds. We go through this routine because otherwise Hermione will take out every animal in the store. “Okay, But don’t say I didn’t warn you. He bites.”
“I’m sure I can handle it.”
“Whatever you say, kid.”
We go back to the habitat and I unlock the front and hook out the snake. He’s not venomous but he bites, and I don’t feel like getting tagged today. I hand him off to Hermione who begins cooing over his colors. He is a gorgeous snake, black, yellow and iridescent shininess. He nips her on the hand. She frowns.
“Don’t be naughty.”
The snake doesn’t seem to care very much about this admonition as it is deaf, and continues it’s business of trying to rid itself of this annoying thing that is holding it up in the air. It decides that another bite might be in order. This time he gives her a good full force wallop right on the nose. She squeaks, but admirably persists. I’m impressed, that hurts.
“I guess he’s a little scared.” She says in a more subdued voice.
“I told you, he’s mean.” I reply. “You still want him?”
She wrinkles her nose at me. “I can handle it, I’ve read about them.”
“Then you probably know what he’s going to do next right?” I ask. Suddenly she looks nervous, obviously she does NOT know what his other defense mechanism is. Right on cue, he dumps his entire bowels and the contents on his musk glands into her poofy orange hair. The shop smells like an enormous greasy, musky, fart. This is no minor smell, it is truly a unique and persistant odor. Her eyes start to water a bit from the noxiousness of it. "Oh man right in your hair! That sucks. " I add helpfully.
“It’s pretty gross.” She agrees. “Um…Do you think you can take him while I clean up?”
I grab the snake who promptly bites me on the forearm. Nasty little fucker. I raise an eyebrow at her. “You still want him?”
“Sure. He’s gross but I’ll calm him down.” She goes to use the restroom. It doesn’t help much. To her credit she bought him, and tamed him, though it took months of her using a lot of scented lotion to cover up the stick she says. I was impressed enough that I bought her a subscription to the journal of herpetology, and let her intern in the store.

Just goes to show you that sometimes bad customers can be good owners. She’s currently working towards a degree in zoology from last I heard.

87

Not to my knowledge other than the expected bites and scratches.

88

Have you had many run ins with PETA? Protesters chained together outside your shop? Picketing?

89

Not for long once I brought out a few of the more intimidating animals. A Albino Monocled Cobra usually works well. :smiley: As it turns out, PETA is apparently only interested in protecting the cute, nice ones.

90

I’m not Acid Lamp, obviously, but I can comment: no, most dog ‘n’ cat vets won’t have the knowledge to handle these animals. Heck, even for our guinea pigs we’re advised to go to an exotics specialist (the fellow we see does handle some less-common animals, judging by the photos in his waiting room).

Of course, by “less-common” I mean birds, lizards, small mammals… I have no clue if he handls much along the lines of wolves and ocelots (I wonder if a regular cat/dog vet could do those?).

91

Snip.

They shouldn’t have any trouble attending to these animals as their biology is for all intents and purposes identical to those of their domesticated cousins. They may decline to treat them though out of lack of insurance coverage, or not wanting to be responsible for an exotic.

92

Does anybody ever make a profit breeding panther chameleons (furcifer pardalis), or is it just something that you do as a hobby and hope you break even at?

93

Heh. You can make a profit at it, but like most breeding operations you’ll have to focus on either quality or quantity. The problem is that they are such sensitive animals that they require very particular set ups to breed reliably. That usually doesn’t include loads of observation and handling time. There used to be a short video on youtube about one prominent operation. They had a bunch of screened in outdoor cells that each housed several females and a male. Still, the cost of the food, and the frequency of the pairings, along with dud eggs meant that even a large facility did not make huge profits.

94

This is a great thread! Even for someone like me who hates and fears snakes. :eek:

Thanks Acid Lamp

95

Are you talking about the African pygmy hedgehogs, or the European ones? I had several of the pygmies, and bred them, but never had this reaction. Maybe I’m just immune.

And in the area of vomit, barn owls are lovely to look at, but piss one off and they vomit horrendous-smelling stuff on you.

96

Yeah, I resemble that remark. But the the closest thing I ever owned to exotics was a wild caught Discus.

You had stonefish? :eek:
I’ve seen the victim of a stonefish.
He just sat on the beach screaming, until they wisked him off to hospital.
I’ve never heard anything so horrific before, or since.

Any fish stories? I can imagine that exotics would be a PITA regarding water quality tolerances.

97

Holy crap, that Fennec Fox is adorable. How difficult are those to keep as pets?

98

For people interested in captive breeding, when you import different species do you keep track of subspecies or location designations? My dad is a serious tropical fish hobbyist and breeder. He sometimes collects his own (in Africa, etc.), but when he buys/trades them he only wants fish from other hobbyists that pay attention to locations.

I can understand that – because even to my untrained eye, the coloring can be quite different from one location to another. I think he even has one that is hermaphroditic in most locations, but in this one location there are distinct males and females. So location really does matter, in some cases.

Do some of your clients demand that kind of information? Does it even matter for things like lizards and snakes and whatnot?

99

I had a friend who owned Piranhas. They kind of suck :frowning:

What about skunks? I’ve always thought they would make a cool pet and, from what I understand, you can destink them. Any info I should know about before buying one? Can they be potty trained?

Oh I meant to add: I really enjoyed reading this post, especially the stories that were included. Thanks!

100

Wikipedia has a page on pet skunks. They aren’t legal in many states unfortunately.