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Petsmart and crickets...

flamekitty84

flamekitty84

New member
So I had an incident at my local Petsmart that reaaalllly upset me...I went in to find a small snake dead in his home with a cricket jumping around...I also saw several corns who were very sad looking and sickly...probably getting 'fed' crickets as well
I was so shook up by this that I avoided Petsmart for a while, but the scene disturbed me so much that I made a special trip to talk to the reptile lady on duty at the time.
I asked her what she fed the snakes and she replied immediately with crickets. I informed her that snakes will not eat crickets and u know what she told me?
and I quote
"They will if they are hungry enough"
I seriously almost flipped
So after discussing with her how I've been dealing with snakes for over 7 years and I would know better, and after threatening never to return to another Petsmart, she said she didn't know who was throwing crickets in the tanks and that it would stop...
What opinions do you guys have about such a situation? I was so appalled by the poor snake that lay starved to death by these oblivious and uncaring people, I honestly don't think I can set foot in another Petsmart again..
Has anyone else seen this before and confronted them about it? Has anyone contacted the company with any luck about resolving these issues? And is it even worth the time to do so? Please tell me your stories and what your course of action was for these defenseless babies.
I'd like to do something more for them.
 
This isn't an issue of PetSmart, as much as it is an issue of the particular store. Training failed and policy is not being followed or passed along at many levels of management. Ultimately this falls on the Operations and Store Managers (2nd and 1st in command, respectively). From there, this falls on the District Manager. Unless signage has changed, PetSmart does list an 800 # on all their live animal displays for such issues. I would recommend taking this issue up with the Operations and Store Managers. From there, if nothing results, move to the District Manager. If still nothing, you can move up to the Regional VP.

Something to also consider. As a former employee, their reptile caging isn't exactly cricket proof. Plan-o-gram layout typically calls for the snakes to be placed on the top row of the endcap. At the stores I worked at, some lizard species were also set for the top row. It wasn't uncommon for uneaten crickets to sometimes escape and end up in other caging. A great Pet Care Manager, Lead, and/or Associate will notice this though and correct it. It was a pain to trickle this down, but hopefully my old Albuquerque, NM stores still follow practices I instilled in those associates.

Interestingly, out here in the Dallas-Ft Worth area, Petcos seem to be of better care and overall cleanliness of their live animals. The opposite was the case in Albuquerque, where stepping foot into a Petco usually resulted in a number of poor looking animals on the herp side of things. But, the Albuquerque, NM area PetSmarts also have excellent Store Managers and a District Manager that is always assessing his stores and questioning anything that's wrong or appears wrong.
 
Chain stores seems vary where I live. At one PetCo, aside from having three yearlings in one display, employees seem to know their snakes, they don't allow customer to handle snakes for two days after feeding, they provide feed chart when selling a snake etc. Yet another PetCo, small corn snakes were kept with some sort of dirt as bedding without any hide :(
 
Petco here seems to do a better job than Petsmart, but it is store dependent. I also agree that the crickets may simply be escapees. In our petco store, the same rack holds snakes, frogs, lizards, and tarantulas, and for pretty much all but the snakes, crickets are a reasonable food source, and sometimes make it into the snake tanks-but I'm pretty confident at that store that snakes get appropriately sized mice. I admit, I do have to wonder how they manage to feed the smallest corn hatchlings. I swear sometimes they get some who don't even look to have had their first shed yet.
 
I've found Petcos and PetSmarts to be very variable and it really comes down to the expertise of the staff and how much they care about their animals. We have a Petco near here that takes superb care of their reptiles, and also gets some really nice looking and healthy corn snakes from a local breeder. Then we have another one about 10 miles away that is a total dump.
 
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