I needed something from my local Pet Club the other day. I broke down and went in. My new rule, is that for any reason, if I walk into a pet store that sells animals (which is quite rare these days), I'm going to cost them more money by virtue of me walking in AND I will do something to improve the lot of some living creature in there at that moment.
Because of huge prior stinks I have made, they no longer sell cavies or rabbits. But they do sell hamsters, birds, fish, feeder rats, feeder mice and bugs.
This was a pain in the butt visit because I ended up having to spend over an hour in there.
"Why do you have a rabbit water bottle in the mouse cage, the rat cage and the hamster cages. You sell small animal water bottles, right? You see that's what they are for, right?" uh huh. "Well, do you think they can push that huge ball bearing up to drink water with their tiny little tongues? NO. Look at that water bottle! The spicket is buried in the bedding. Do you think the poor mice can even get to the water? You sell the correct water bottles, right? Then, I'll just wait right here while you go get the proper water bottles off your shelf, fill them and replace the bottles on these cages." (Note, I have my cell phone handy and am fully prepared to call Animal Control while I'm standing right there if they refuse.) Now the reason they had the big bottles on the cage was these were aquariums and this water bottle was easy to hook over the edge. The ones they had to install took more of an effort to put on properly. But they were the right ones and the animals were thirsty. While he was busy doing that, I was checking out the fish tanks. I pointed out the tanks wtih the dead fish. And I had him fill the terribly small betta fish bowls. In the past in this store, I've also had them add another cage and reduce by half the number of poor rats in one cage--also causing them to go open new supplies. It's a little thing, but if everyone did that, it would start to make a bigger difference.
