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Petsmart doesn't (or at least, is not supposed to) sell snakes. Because they don't believe in selling feeder animals (though their policy claims they respect those that do) they also can't sell the animals that would eat feeder animals (other than crix). I can respect that, though I know a lot of people who went in for a feeder mouse only to be upset that PM wouldn't sell them a pet to feed to their snake.
The animals from PM that seem to be in the poorest health predictably are the hamsters and anoles. Hamsters are hard to keep in a petstore setting because they are so prone to getting wet tail from stress. The anoles that I have seen are almost always overcrowded. Because of the extra food competition, some of the smaller ones are really skinny, and I've seen larger anoles kill the smaller ones and nothing was done about it.
To be fair, though, the PM stores around here are a lot better than most of the locally run pet stores. They do have policies and procedures in place to protect the animals, but, like any corporation, those tend to get washed out and changed by local management... some for the better, and others for the worst. The flip side of being a large corporation, though, is that they have the money in their budget to take sick animals to the vet and get them treatment, and they do... at least the ones here do. I know of some guinea pigs that were successfully treated, then adopted out to good homes.
Still, I wouldn't mind seeing them making some improvements. For example, it would be great if they would follow in PetCo's footsteps and stop selling large birds. It would also be great if they stopped selling unweaned baby birds, and even better if they stopped handfeeding in store (yes, a lot of baby birds do die because of it). I would also like to see less crowded reptile habitats, no selling of large lizards (large being anything over 2 ft adult length) and, if they insist on selling RES, to make better accomodations for them.
Not that great, but, to be fair, PM and PC are, as corporations, really not that bad. It's the management of the individual stores that earns them a bad rap, I think, and that's nothing more than the consequence of being a wide spread company.
JMO... to be taken with a grain of salt.
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